Psychroalgia
by Frost Deejn
Summary: Post-Endgame. Wanda has been in hiding, using her power to watch versions of herself and Vision in parallel Earths. But when the world is invaded by incorporeal beings that feed on insanity, she's forced to deal with her grief to save it, alongside Doctor Strange, Wong, and a Vision from another dimension...a Vision with a past even darker than her own.
1. Apparition

Chapter 1: Apparition

* * *

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

~T.S. Eliot, from "The Waste Land"

* * *

Christchurch, New Zealand

The reports came from an old school building. There had been a recent spate of posts on social media and websites devoted to haunted houses and urban legends. Students here reported eerie feelings, sensations of a presence, strange shapes seen from corners of eyes in empty rooms. The kinds of things no one would take seriously.

No one except a couple of sorcerers sworn to guard the Earth from supernatural threats.

Dr. Strange and Wong stepped into the darkened room, raised hands surrounded by disks of light.

"If it's still here, we're going to have to draw it out," Strange said. "Ready?"

"Ready," Wong replied.

Strange spread his hands, and a pale light with a play of colors reminiscent of an oil slick on the surface of a puddle glowed between them.

Spells were not unlike surgeries: you needed the right tools, a knowledge of what you had to do, and the precision to pull it off. In the case of magic, the tools were incantations (spoken out loud, shouted, or even just thought, depending on the spell and the skill of the caster), objects of power, and gesture to direct that power. All these tools simply gave access to manipulate the fabric of reality, to reach under the surface of the universe.

And, just like in surgery, if you had those tools but didn't know what you were doing, the results could be catastrophic. Just like in surgery, you had to stitch up the cuts you made to reach the problem. You had to close the doors you opened. If you didn't close those doors, bad things could come out of them.

Not every supernatural threat they faced was conscious. Some were the magical equivalents of a toxin or a contagion. It didn't take Strange long to realize this wasn't one of those. This was aware. It was cunning.

It was stalking.

Thinking a string of words unpronounceable with human vocal apparatus, Strange reached a tangle of sorcery into the dark, into the floor. He grasped the entity.

"Here it comes."

He drew it into the open.

"That's...close your eyes!" Wong shouted.

But Strange had already seen it. If black could glow, he would describe it as a glowing black creature. It looked insectlike, or more like an isopod, about the size of a football. Then it turned toward him, growing and changing into an amorphous shape.

With some power of its own, it dissolved and coalesced, pulling loose from Strange's enchantment, and flew toward him. He put up a shield, but the being's eyes had already locked onto his eyes, and something passed between them.

The darkness blinked.

He was in the hall of a medical school. Only the emergency lights were on, and those were flickering. An old woman lurched toward him. She looked human, but her hands were huge; each of her thin, knobby fingers was easily two feet long.

"Sith zneam ngithun ron ud uy," she said solemnly, her voice becoming higher pitched with each syllable, ending slightly above what a human voice was capable of.

She reached for his head with her enormous hand. He tried to defend himself, but when he reached for magic he found none.

He was now in an operating room, but it was the most unsanitary, unwholesome room he'd ever been in. Blood stains blotched the bare concrete floor, the surgical instruments were antiques and covered in rust. Somewhere, something was dripping. Millions of insects clung to the walls and ceiling. They didn't move, but they disappeared and reappeared in time with his heartbeat, and every time they reappeared they were in new positions.

Dr. Strange looked at the face of the man on the operating table. It was his own face.

This wasn't real. Of course it couldn't be real. But it _felt _real. Every detail was vivid, every smell, sound, even the dampness of the air, the weight of the scalpel in his hand, the texture of the floor under his feet...everything seemed real.

Someone or something was behind him, moving slowly, examining him. He couldn't see or hear it, but knew it was there, coming closer.

And then the reality around him flickered out. He was back in the dark, musty room in the old school, Wong in front of him wrangling with the nightmare creature with threads of magic.

Strange was disoriented for a moment. Where had he just been? Was it real? Was this real?

He shook it off. He had to act, had to trust his own mind and reason. He joined in Wong's attack, opening a portal that he quickly moved to swallow the creature. The portal went to a dimension where the laws of physics precluded any form of magic, where a being made of magic would simply cease to exist.

When the portal closed, Wong opened his eyes. For several seconds they remained still, on alert, until their senses assured them the power was gone.

"Are you alright?" Wong asked.

"I'm fine. What was that?" Strange asked.

"In the old records, they're called 'mind lice'. They've been recorded for hundreds of years, especially on ships at sea. We don't know much more about them, because those who encounter them tend to go insane."

"Charming," Strange said. "So we have records of these things in the library?"

"Yes."

"Let's go."

* * *

Doctor Strange floated in the library, open books orbiting around him.

Wong hadn't been exaggerating about how little they knew of the so-called mind lice. Most mentions of them came from the ravings of patients in old asylums or modern psychiatric hospitals.

He levitated his laptop into the swirl of research material and started searching medical databases for cases of sudden-onset psychological breakdowns without known explanations. Combining those cases with the old reports in the Sanctum Sanctorum's records, patterns began to emerge.

"The source is somewhere in the southern hemisphere," he announced when Wong walked toward him between the rows of bookshelves. "The earliest reports of the mind lice were from a whaling ship off the coast of Antarctica in 1874. Since then they've been attacking further and further north, moving over land and ocean indiscriminately. The latest reports are from as far north as Australia and Brazil. They're spreading. And I don't think this is a random attack. I think it's a coordinated invasion."

"What makes you think that?"

"When that thing was in my head, during my hallucination, I felt a connection to something else. Something bigger."

"How can you be so sure that wasn't part of the hallucination?"

"I'm not 'so sure,' it's just a feeling. But whether these things were sent by another entity, or whether they're invading our Earth from some crack in reality, we have to find where they're coming from and deal with it."

"I found something that might help with that." Wong handed him a stack of paper.

Strange skimmed the headers and frowned. "This is a field report from an Avengers' mission, from seven years ago." It didn't surprise him that they had records from the Avengers; the sorcerers of the Sanctum Sanctorum rutinely hacked crime-fighting organizations all over the world watching for reports of the weird, looking for threats that would take magic to combat.

"From when Iron Man and Vision investigated an abandoned HYDRA base in Antarctica," Wong said. "Read the last paragraph on page six."

Strange's frown deepened as he read. "He didn't know what he was seeing. He dismissed it as some kind of unknown atmospheric mirage." He skimmed the next couple of pages. "He didn't make a note of the coordinates."

"I know. And unfortunately we can't ask him about it. Dead men tell no tales."

"True. But this is the best lead we have for the source of this threat." He stroked his chin, thinking deeply for several seconds. "There is someone he might have told more to than he put in the official report. Maybe it's time to dig her up."


	2. WandaVision

Chapter 2: WandaVision

* * *

Now there is frost upon the hill

And no leaf stirring in the wood;

The little streams are cold and still;

Never so still has winter stood.

Never so held as in this hollow,

Beneath these hemlocks dark and low,

Brooding this hour that hours must follow

Burdened with snow…

...

Now there is nothing, no confusion,

To shield against the silence here;

And spirits, barren of illusion,

To whom all agonies are clear,

Rush on the naked heart and cry

Of every poignant shining thing

Where there is little left to die

And no more Spring.

~George O'Neil, "Where It Is Winter"

* * *

Edinburgh, Scotland

The rain was so fine it felt like pinpricks of pure cold floating in the air, perhaps more accurately called mist than rain.

Wanda didn't mind the chill. Honestly, she barely felt it anymore.

She hurried through the midnight streets to the condemned house on the outskirts of the city where she was staying. She had some food she'd scavenged tucked in a plastic bag: a few pieces of bread with some patches of mold someone had thrown away, and a few apples she'd pilfered from someone's tree.

The house she was squatting in was hidden from other houses by thick hedges. She quickly checked to make sure the streets were deserted, and levitated herself to the open window on the upper floor. The house was old and falling apart. The stairs had collapsed long ago, which made the upper floor a secure place for her to hide out.

In the dark, she wrapped herself in blankets against the cold, quickly ate her slapdash supper, then gave in to the temptation that constantly tugged at her.

Wanda had discovered this power a couple of months after the battle with Thanos. She had been missing Vision so achingly, she'd tried to find the signature of his mind with her powers. Maybe she was searching for his ghost, or couldn't believe he was really dead, or maybe it was a bout of temporary insanity. She'd searched so hard, she'd broken through something. The barrier between universes. She couldn't step through, but she could see. It took her days to learn how to navigate the multi-dimensional space and actually seek out a specific mind signature.

It came easily to her now. She could see into other versions of Earth. She could find and observe other versions of herself, and almost as easily different versions of Vision. There were so many Earths: probably billions of them, or more. Not all of them were habitable, and of the ones that were, not all of them had human life. But many did.

There were plenty of Earths where she and/or Vision didn't exist. And where they did exist, they didn't always meet. And when they did meet, they didn't always fall in love. And when they did fall in love, they didn't always work out. But the frequency with which they did was far higher than chance. She had already seen hundreds of versions of her and Vision living happily together. Her favorite times were when she came across her and Vision's alternates when they were meeting for the first time, and could watch them fall in love. She periodically checked back in on her favorite universes to see how they were doing.

Tonight her mind drifted through some universes she hadn't explored before. She would peek in at herself when she sensed her mind signature, and then look for Vision, moving on quickly if she didn't find them. When after a few universes she found them together, she stopped there and watched.

This was one of the versions of Earth where Vision's soul had been born in a human body. As far as she could tell, neither of them had powers. They were out on a walk, hand in hand, on a golden autumn day.

Her heart warmed at the sight of them.

In her search for happy versions of herself, she had, of course, come across the opposite. Looking through the universes, she'd seen horrible things, things that haunted her nightmares: dead worlds, worlds of suffering, versions of herself that shocked her to the core...

But it was worth it to find little moments like this.

She could stand living in this rotten world, in her hopeless life, as long as she could watch herself being happy elsewhere, with Vision alive and thriving.

Every night, she fell asleep in this cold, dilapidated house, wrapped in dusty blankets, watching scenes like this. She'd wake up in the morning and watch some more, until she got too hungry to concentrate. Then she'd go out and scrounge for food. She'd come back to her room and look through the universes again until she fell asleep again.

Thus she passed her days.


	3. A Reluctant Recruit

Chapter 3: A Reluctant Recruit

* * *

The Ditch is dear to the Drunken man

For is it not his Bed—

His Advocate—his Edifice?

How safe his fallen Head

In her disheveled Sanctity—

Above him is the sky—

Oblivion bending over him

And Honor leagues away.

~Emily Dickinson

* * *

Edinburgh, Scotland

Doctor Strange decided to open a portal directly into the room where Wanda Maximoff was staying, mostly because he wanted to make the most dramatic entrance possible.

Walking into the room, he immediately regretted that decision.

Wong stepped out behind him, wrinkling his nose at the smells in the dirty, dusty room: rotten food scraps, mice, unwashed clothes, and stale urine from a large bucket in the corner.

"I did warn you," Strange said.

"You didn't warn me enough."

At first, they thought the room's occupant was out, then they saw movement from a pile of blankets. Strange waved his hand and the blankets flew back, revealing Wanda, awake but clearly still groggy, even though it was almost two in the afternoon.

"What the hell? Get out!"

Her hands glowed red, and a broken chair flew at them from across the room. Strange lifted his hand and stopped it in midair.

"We need to talk to you, Wanda," he said.

"Not interested."

A few trash projectiles surrounded in a red glow flew at him. The Cloak of Levitation flicked out to block them.

While Wanda was focusing on Strange, Wong conjures a net of energy that trapped her hands.

"Hey!"

"Like he said, we need to talk to you. But not here."

Strange opened a portal under Wanda, which swallowed her up before she had time to react. He and Wong portaled themselves to the New York Sanctum, where Strange opened a portal near the ceiling. Wanda fell out of it, spilling onto the floor. She pushed herself up and red light swirled from her hands again, but the Cloak of Levitation flew from Strange's shoulders and wrapped itself around her hands, extinguishing her power. She desperately tried to free her hands, then slumped to the floor in defeat.

"Let me go," she said.

"Hmm...no. Not until we have a little chat," said Strange.

"You can't just...kidnap me like this."

He waved his hand dismissively. "The evidence suggests otherwise. Of course, we probably _couldn't _have just kidnapped you like this, but—I mean, just look at yourself; you're hardly at the top of your game. To think a year and a half ago you almost brought Thanos down by yourself."

She glared at him. "Why did you bring me here?"

Wong answered, "We were hoping you would help us save the world again."

"Why me?"

"You don't seem to have anything better to do," Strange said. "And I get it that you're not interested; you don't even care about this world anymore, not when you can squander your life spying on yourself and your dead boyfriend in other worlds."

"How do you know about that?"

"Please. Our order is dedicated to protecting this Earth from supernatural disturbances. Did you think poking peepholes in the boundaries between realities daily is something that would fly below our radar?"

"That's how we were able to find you when no one else could. And when one of the most powerful beings on the planet went off the grid weeks after the defeat of Thanos, a lot of people were looking," Wong said. "S.H.I.E.L.D. has been looking for you since you went into hiding."

"Pepper Potts, with all the resources of Stark Industries, hasn't been able to find you," Strange added.

"The Wakandan intelligence network has also been searching for you."

"Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes were looking everywhere for you for months," said Strange. "I would have thought you'd at least want Sam Wilson to know where you were."

"I didn't want anyone to know where I was," Wanda said. "I didn't want people worrying over me."

"It looks to me like you could really use some worrying over."

She looked down, at the cloak still trapping her hands. "I'm not hurting anyone."

"Except yourself."

"You don't get it," she stated. "_I'm not hurting anyone. _And if you knew the things I'm capable of, the horrors I've committed in other timelines, you'd know what an accomplishment that is. I'm like you said: one of the most powerful beings on the planet, and I'm... I'm not...I'm not stable. Keeping myself away from the world is the best thing I can do for it."

"Is that what you've been telling yourself," Doctor Strange said contemptuously.

"It's the truth. Some of the things I've seen myself do... Do you want to know how many times I've caused the end of the world, or caused some kind of catastrophe that killed thousands? Five. Five times, and that's just the ones I know of."

"And how many times have you saved the world?" Wong asked.

She wrinkled her eyebrows. "I don't know. I don't know if any."

"Well, we wouldn't have beat Thanos without you, so that's one. But it makes sense that it's easier to count how many times you destroy a world than save it. The end of the world really stands out; it usually only happens once per timeline. Saving the world is more like maintanance. It's like sanitation work: the better a job you do at it, the less people notice," he said.

"That...makes sense," Wanda said thoughtfully, the distant look in her eyes indicating she was thinking of something specific.

Strange sighed and steepled his figers. "Believe me, dragging you out of the gutter wasn't my first choice, but there's something coming, and unfortunately we may need your help. Are you ready to hear us out like a grown-up?"

"What's coming?" she asked.

With a flick of a finger, Doctor Strange summoned the Cloak of Levitation back to his shoulders. Wanda stretched her newly freed hands, but didn't revive her powers.

"We're not sure. There are incorporeal entities that attack minds, causing their victims to go insane. They're spreading, and their source seems to be somewhere in the Southern Ocean or Antarctica."

"And you think I can help you with them because attacking people's minds is what I used to do?"

"No, but that's an interesting thought," he said. "The reason we wanted to talk to you is that, seven years ago, Iron Man and Vision went to Antarctica to dismantle a HYDRA base. While Vision was out flying, he saw something he described in his report as nearly ultraviolet lines that writhed as if they were alive, as if they were the outlines of otherwise transparent motile organisms. He speculated it was some unknown atmospheric phenomenon and didn't give any more details. That description matches what I saw when I faced one of these entities. And we know he was secretly seeing you at the time. Did he tell you about it?"

Wanda looked down at her fidgeting hands. "He mentioned it. He didn't tell me much."

"What did he tell you? Anything you remember might be important."

"He said he had no idea what it was, that it was the strangest thing he'd ever seen, that it looked enormous. When he talked about it, he sounded both fascinated and a little afraid. And not much scared him."

As she talked about him, her hands became more active. It looked like her fingers were trying to claw at or strangle each other.

"Did he tell you where it was?" Strange pressed.

"No. Not that I remember."

He sighed and paced. "Well that's useful."

"I'm sorry. That's all I know."

Strange abruptly stopped pacing and turned to her. "Can you see into other people's minds?"

She looked startled at the abruptness of his question. "To an extent. I haven't...tried it for a long time. Why?"

"There have been a rash of sudden psychological breakdowns in previously stable individuals. I suspect they're victims of the entities we've been discussing, but I want to confirm it. Will you help us?" His question wasn't a request, it was an ultimatum.

Wanda hesitated.

"Help us save the world one more time," Wong said encouragingly.

"Then you can crawl back into whatever hole you choose," said Strange.

Wanda shrugged. "I'll help if I can."

"Good. Let's go." Strange opened a portal.

"Wait a moment." Wong looked Wanda over, formed a ball of magic between his hands, and sent it in crisscrossing beams over her. Her torn, dirty coat and pants turned into a clean dark green sweater and crisp jeans. Her mussy, tangled hair was suddenly clean and pulled back in a tight braid.

She glanced down, frowning in confusion. "At midnight do I turn back into a pumpkin?"

"Of course not. For astrological reasons, the spell will be broken at 6:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time," Strange said.

"Really?"

"No," he scoffed. "Let's get going."


	4. Intimations

Chapter 4: Intimations

* * *

Into my heart on air that kills

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

...

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

~A. E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad XL"

* * *

San Diego, California

It was disorienting. Wanda had been avoiding people for so long—hiding out, deliberately living and dressing as a vagrant so people would ignore her. Now she was walking through the halls of a hospital following behind two sorcerers, avoiding the eyes of doctors, nurses, and patients they passed. It was hard for her to believe she looked presentable. She kept glancing down at her outfit to remind herself she didn't look like some homeless crazy Doctor Strange was committing.

She felt acutely out of place.

Doctor Strange and Wong had magically altered their appearances. They walked down the hospital hallway dressed as doctors. No one gave them a second glance.

Strange opened a door like he knew exactly where he was going.

They found themselves in a private room. The patient was sitting at a table scribbling on a paper, but when he saw them he jumped up and backed against the wall, spilling pens and papers on the floor.

Strange ignored him and took a folder from the foot of the bed. He pretended to look through it.

"Doctor Baldwin Mills, thirty-five years old, marine biologist. Ten months ago, he and five colleagues were found drifting in a life raft in the Southern Ocean after their research vessel went silent. All of them exhibited extreme psychological abnormalities, including irrational and sometimes violent behavior. Two of the survivors have already died, either by suicide or just the recklessness brought on by their psychological states. Doctor Mills here hasn't spoken since being found, though he's prone to fits of screaming and graphorrhea." He nodded toward the pages and pages on the table.

Wanda picked one up; it was packed with strings of words that seemed to make no sense, but were written in a tight, frantic cursive that gave the impression he was trying to communicate something urgent.

"So? Are you going to do your thing or not?" Strange asked.

Wanda looked up at the patient, Baldwin Mills. He looked terrified and confused, like a wounded animal at a vet.

"I'm not going to hurt you." She moved toward him slowly, hand outstretched.

He stared at her.

It had been so long since she'd looked into another person's mind. Since joining the Avengers, she'd only done it with Vision. It had been easy with him; he'd been willing, even eager to let her into his mind. No one else had ever trusted her like that. It was a necessarily intrusive process, and with an unwilling subject it could be extremely unpleasant for both of them.

Her fingers twitched, connecting her to the level of reality that was pure Mind.

Eyes widening at the tendrils of red light that wove through the air toward his face, Dr. Mills opened his mouth to scream, but couldn't get it out before she was in.

She couldn't read thoughts—her powers had never been that sensitive—but she could pick up on emotional states and vibes of personality.

His mind was more chaotic than anyone she'd ever encountered before. He was terrified, but it seemed to be a kind of constant existential terror he had lived with for so long it had become a permanent state.

She treaded deeper, into memories, images.

_The ocean, silver and gray. The research vessel rose and fell, tilting so much with each wave it almost felt like it would tip over. There was something in the sky besides the clouds._

_"What is that? What is that thing?"_

_The sky was blue, streaked with high clouds that moved impossibly fast._

_The screen showed footage from the submersible, the dark ocean lit by a powerful light directly in front of the camera. The thing the camera illuminated was not a squid, not a whale, not a shark, not a jellyfish._

_"The radio's still out. We've got to get back. Got to warn..."_

_A tiny inlet of a nameless island to wait out the storm. Penguins on the stony beach, albatrosses in the crags huddled against the wind. Freezing rain coated the ship in ice. It was already there, already with them. Electricity out. Dark. Why was it dark? It was summer. Something at the window, something at the door. Had to get off the ship. It was frozen, bound in ice to the rocks, too little time to break out. It came. The emergency raft! The raft! Carry across the ice. What is that thing? Behind them. It was in the raft with them, sitting there, looking at them. The water was death. The thing was patient. Glow... The glow... The swirling lines, glowing against their eyes like an afterimage of staring at lights, an insectine face. It was hungry._

It was familiar.

_It isn't real, _Wanda inserted the impression in Dr. Mills' mind. _It was a hallucination, a trick of the light on the ocean._

His mind flickered with the possibility, but rejected it, as it had been considered and rejected thousands of times.

_It's too late..._

She tried something different. She created a scene in his mind, a warm meadow, sunshine gleaming on flowers and grass, surrounded by steady, protective trees. She showed Dr. Mills himself, lying on the grass in the meadow, safe and sound.

But the image faded away, morphing back into the boat trapped in ice as something surrounded it. Not because it couldn't just destroy them, but because it wanted them to suffer, to fear, to belong to it.

Wanda extricated herself from Dr. Mills' mind. He turned his head to stare at her as she took a step back.

"I'm sorry," she said to him. Of course she couldn't bring his mind peace; she had none to give.

As the full implications of what she'd seen crashed over her, she sank to the floor and wrapped her arms around herself.

If only it were Vision's arms. If only he were here. He wouldn't necessarily know what to do any more than she did, but if he were beside her she wouldn't feel so entirely hopeless.

"What did you see?" Dr. Strange demanded.

"I saw what happened to their boat," she answered unsteadily. "And I saw what attacked them. I know what it is. Or...rather...I should say...I know where it came from."

Strange and Wong glanced at each other, then back at her sharply.

"What?"


	5. Dread

Chapter 5: Dread

* * *

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

...

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

* * *

Long Beach, California

When Wanda's first attempt at an explanation was muddled nearly to the point of incoherence, Wong insisted they talk about it over breakfast.

The waterfront park was nearly deserted but for a few passing joggers and dog walkers so early on a weekday morning. The picnic table where the trio of incognito superheroes sat with their coffee and pastries was safely out of the way. A row of shops and a pretty lighthouse on a hill framed their view of the harbor. A couple of docked cruise ships were visible further off, fully lit by the freshly risen sun. It was a calming scene, but Wanda didn't seem to feel it.

She'd eaten a few bites of her danish, after compulsively tearing them into small pieces, but she hadn't touched her latte.

"Okay," she finally said between deep breaths. "What I was trying to explain is that the creature I saw in Dr. Mills' mind...I have not _actually _seen it before, but I have seen pictures of creatures like it. But not on _this _Earth. Not our Earth."

"Yeah, we get that," Strange said. "What can you tell us about them?"

"The Earth where I saw them...it is very close to ours, if that makes sense. What I mean is it's like ours. It's not like there's really directions there where you can say this one's less distance to ours than that one."

"The multiverse is more like trees," Strange said. "Different timelines branch off from the trunk of the tree; the ones that branch off more recently can be thought of as closer to ours. Except there are millions of different trees occupying the same space. That doesn't matter, just tell us about the creatures."

"The most different thing about that Earth from ours is the religions. Every religion celebrates the defeat of what they call the Devil, and its banishment from the world, which happened about two hundred years ago. When the Devil was loose in the world, almost everyone went crazy. People destroyed, killed, ran wild for no reason. The Devil fed on their madness, or maybe it was that it fed on their sanity, and that drove them mad. I'm not clear on a lot of things. But there were some people who were immune to it. They made a secret plan. They found the largest form the Devil had, the one all others came from, and they opened a magical gate that the Devil fell through, saving their world. Some of their religions teach that this Devil will someday return, and they prepare their followers to fight it again. They have pictures of devils in their holy buildings. The devils have different shapes, but they look like the things Dr. Mills saw."

Her hands were shaking so badly she had to give up tearing the remnants of her danish into smaller and smaller pieces.

"So you think they banished it from their world to ours?" Strange asked.

She nodded.

"You said some people were immune to it," Wong said. "Do you know what made them immune?"

"No. The religions don't agree on it; some think the most worthy or the strongest willed could resist the insanity, some think it was genetic."

"So they believed all the devils eminated from a central source, and once that was defeated the others disappeared?" Strange asked.

"That is how the stories went."

"And in that world, the Devil's influence spread all over the globe?"

She nodded. "It ruled the world for years. The madness destroyed nearly everything. Arsons, murders, starvations, cannibalism, suicides... From the way the religions of that world talk about it, it was hell on Earth. Most people died."

Strange stood abruptly and started pacing.

After a couple of minutes, Wong asked him, "Any ideas how we can find the source?"

"We'll just have to keep talking to witnesses." He looked at Wanda, obviously still agitated. "We're still going to need you. I've got a lot of reading to do. Let's get back to the Sanctum."


	6. Empty Room

Chapter 6: Empty Room

* * *

Since you went away

No flowers are left on earth.

~Soseki, from _The Moon in the Pines: Zen Haiku_, trans. Jonathan Clemens

* * *

Wanda didn't know how this building worked. It seemed to be larger inside than outside, and she was pretty sure the door Wong opened to show her to her room hadn't been there earlier.

The room was larger than a normal bedroom, but it was sparsely furnished. It had a bare bookshelf, an empty set of drawers, a wood desk with a matching wood chair, and a bed.

She sat on the bed and stared at the wall.

Doctor Strange had declined her offer to help with the research, claiming he'd be mostly skimming medical reports she couldn't possibly understand. Wong suggested she get some rest. But she didn't know how she could rest with doom hanging over the planet.

Not that it was the first time she'd felt doom. That had been when she'd seen Ultron's plan in Vision's mind.

No, it had been while trapped with Pietro in their bombed apartment, their parents dead and their own survival unlikely.

But she'd had Pietro then. And she had Vision when they learned about Thanos. It wasn't until the very end, when she accepted Vision's insistence that they were out of time and she had to destroy him to stop Thanos, that that one had really started to feel like doom. And that feeling had never gone away, not when she'd woken up in Wakanda after being dusted to be told by a strangely dressed man she'd never seen before that she had to go with him if she wanted to stop Thanos, not when Thanos and his forces were killed by Tony Stark, and not for even a single moment since.

Come to think of it, doom was a feeling she knew particularly well.

Maybe Strange had been right; maybe if she were being honest with herself, she didn't give a damn about this world anymore.

She pushed herself off the bed and restlessly drifted around the empty room, opening and shutting the closet door, the empty drawers. She opened another door, finding a small bathroom, and looked at herself in the mirror. She didn't feel like the face in the mirror was really hers.

When Wong had opened the door, he'd said, "This is your room." Wanda hadn't replied, but something about it had sounded wrong to her, like it was ungrammatical to call anything _hers_. She'd lost everything. Not just Vision and Natasha and Tony. Her old room and most of her belongings had been destroyed along with the Avengers compound, what few possessions she had to her name during her time on the run had been lost in the five years she hadn't existed.

When she decided to disappear in the weeks after defeating Thanos, she hadn't taken anything with her. Honestly, she hadn't thought about how long she'd be gone. She'd bounced between staying with Pepper Potts, Clint, and Sam for a couple of weeks, but nowhere had felt like she belonged. She thought she was just going on a trip to figure things out. Maybe that's just what she'd told herself. Whatever it was she was looking for, she never found it.

She'd left with the clothes on her back. Soon, returning to skills developed as a teenager on the streets of Sokovia, she was stealing new ones. And even the clothes she wore never felt like they belonged to her.

She had one thing that she cared about. It had been in the pocket of the coat she'd been wearing when Strange and Wong kidnapped her, and when Wong transmuted her outfit, she'd still felt it in the pocket of the sweater. She took it out now and put it in the desk drawer, then sat down in the chair and stared at her hands.

It would be so easy. So easy to let herself forget about this doomed, dismal world for a little while...

Her fingers began twitching on their own, and soon they raised a red glow that surrounded her, blotting away the room she was in. Comfort came over her like a blanket.

What world should she start with?


	7. Fault

Chapter 7: Fault

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain  
Beats upon my heart.  
People twist and scream in pain,—  
Dawn will find them still again;  
This has neither wax nor wane,  
Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;  
I sit in my chair.  
All my thoughts are slow and brown:  
Standing up or sitting down  
Little matters, or what gown  
Or what shoes I wear.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Sorrow"

* * *

Wong was in the library reading some records when he felt a sudden change in the power flow within the Sanctum.

"Dammit," Strange said at the same moment. Levitating his laptop to the ground, he opened a portal and stepped through to Wanda's room. Wong followed.

She was sitting at the desk surrounding herself in a red glow.

"No," Strange scolded, snatching her out of the field she was creating and setting her on her feet.

"Please," Wanda begged. "Just for a few minutes. Please."

"Pull yourself together. We've got a world to save, and all you can think to do is go back to your interdimensional peepshow?"

"I can't do this! I can't face this without him!"

"You can, and you will. Because the world is counting on you. This world needs you to be a hero, not a nervous wreck wallowing in your grief."

She seemed to shrink under his words. "I'm no hero. Obviously. In fact, I was made to be the opposite."

He stared at her, something in his expression changed. He half softened while still trying to remain stern. "I know what you did when Thanos attacked in Wakanda. I know what you sacrificed. If that doesn't make you a hero, no one is worthy of that word. I need you to be _that _Wanda Maximoff again."

She stood frozen for several seconds, then said in a quiet, choked voice, "I never counted on having to _live _with it."

After several more seconds of tense silence, Wanda suddenly lurched toward the door, fleeing the room.

Wong glanced at Strange questioningly.

"Let her go," he said. "If she wants to go drown her sorrows, fine."

"What did she do when Thanos attacked in Wakanda?" Wong asked.

Strange didn't look at him, but at the open door. "She and Vision decided it was better to destroy the Mind Stone than let Thanos get it, even if it was still in Vision's head. Wanda used her power to destroy it. Thanos used the Time Stone to get it anyway."

"Lǎotiān!" Wong swore. "How can you be so hard on her, knowing she's been through that?"

"Because with her powers, she needs to be stronger than this. The things she could potentially do are absolutely incredible, but she's squandering that potential, hiding away, wasting her life. She should stop worrying about herself and use her powers to help the world."

Wong stared at him incredulously. "You're saying she's being selfish because she can't handle what she's been forced to go through? She needs help, not criticism."

"True, but she hasn't sought help. She's run away from everyone who cared about her."

Wong sighed and rubbed his forehead, wondering how someone as brilliant as Stephen Strange could be such an idiot. "When you came to us, you were a wreck: desperate, destitute, ready to throw away your life. And all you had lost was the use of you hands. She has lost her family, her team, and you're telling me now she was forced to sacrifice the life of the one she loved. You were a surgeon, Stephen; tell me, if you saw someone whose body was as wounded as her spirit is, would you expect them to heal themself? Or even be able to seek help on their own?"

That stunned Strange into silence.

With an exasperated sigh, Wong portaled himself to the library, leaving Strange to hopefully think about what he said.


	8. One Cup of Tea

Chapter 8: One Cup of Tea

* * *

Just by being,  
I'm here—  
In snow-fall.

~Issa, from _The Little Book of Zen,  
_ed. Manuela Dunn-Mascetti

* * *

Wanda had found her way to a dark aisle of the vast library, where she curled up under a large bookshelf.

She ached all over, was exhausted to her bones, and felt sick in a way she couldn't quite decide whether was physical or emotional. This was how she always felt these days, when she wasn't watching other worlds. She didn't do that now, not just because she knew if she did Strange and Wong would find her again, but because Strange's words had cut into her, making her feel too ashamed of herself to indulge in her only source of comfort.

She knew Wong was heading her way from the sound of his footsteps. She stayed still, hoping he wouldn't see her.

His footsteps stopped next to her. The room returned to perfect silence.

Finally she gave in and lifted her head to look.

Wong was stooped down, looking at her. His expression was one of gentle sympathy. That made her feel even worse.

He held out his hand. "Come on. I made some tea."

She wasn't sure why she took his hand and let him help her up. Maybe she was just too tired to be stubborn.

He opened a portal, stepped through, and waited for her to follow.

She found herself in some kind of dining room. A fire was blazing in a stone fireplace, but the rest of the room was wood: wood tables and chairs, hardwood floor, log walls and rafters. There were crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, but they were unlit. A large window revealed a mountain landscape covered in snow, with large, wet snowflakes batting against the glass. Wanda couldn't tell if it was dawn, evening, or just gloomy because of the snowclouds.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"A ski lodge in Canada. It's closed for renovation, so we don't have to worry about being seen or overheard."

The only set table was midway between the window and the fireplace. It had a three-tiered plate rack set with sandwiches cut into strips, fruit, and peanut butter cookies, and an ornate white teapot decorated with blue flowers and birds, with two matching teacups.

Wong took a seat and gestured for her to do the same. From her chair, she had a view of the window, with the fire at her back.

"Being able to go anywhere in the world in a second is an amazing power," she said. "It would have been really handy...once." She was thinking of the two years when she and Vision had met in secret, and how she and the other fugitive avengers had traveled around the world in a stolen Quinjet, always looking over their shoulder.

"It is wonderfully convenient," he agreed.

He poured the tea. It was an amber brown in color. Wanda watched wisps of steam rise from it, feeling hollow.

Wong took a sip. Wanda took a sip.

"What kind of tea is this?"

"Tieguanyin," he answered. "It's one of my favorites."

"It's good. I like it."

"Good."

He ate a bit of sandwich, and she did the same. They both looked out the window, saying nothing, as if conversation were unnecessary.

Wanda began to wonder about her host, about how curiously uncurious she'd been about him. Or anything, really, for a long time.

"So...you and Dr. Strange are...wizards?"

"Sorcerers is our preferred term."

"And you're part of some kind of secret society of sorcerers?"

"Yes. Though after an unfortunate incident a few years ago, there aren't many of us left."

"I'm sorry to hear that." She sipped her tea. "How long have you been around? Your...group, I mean."

"For thousands of years. Our records go back to ancient Mesopotamia, but that's just because that's as far back as records go."

"So...when Loki attacked Earth...when the Avengers were formed...and during Ultron...where were you?"

"Our order specializes in defending the world from threats of an occult nature. Part of that mission requires us to remain hidden from the mundane world. When the threat is in the form of technology or conventional human evil, our policy has always been to let police, military organizations, or S.H.I.E.L.D. provide the first line of defense. We did help defend New York during the Chitauri invasion. We were unaware of HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D., and their plan to take over the world. After Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon stopped that plot, we learned that nearly every member of our order was on HYDRA's hit list. While we were watching the Ultron situation closely, we were also preoccupied at the time with defending the world from an unrelated invasion of reptilian cave monsters. That was fun."

She couldn't tell if he was being serious.

"I see."

He refilled both of their teacups.

"Strange can be a jerk," he said. "But believe it or not, he really believes he's trying to help."

Wanda had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that. She said nothing.

"I wish I could have met Vision," he continued. "All I know about him is from the Avengers' records, and what I've seen on the news, but I'm sure he'd want you to be happy."

She knew that. Of course she did. It just made it worse: not only had she lost Vision, she was failing him. Every day.

"But, of course, you already know that," Wong said.

"What? Are you a mind reader too?"

"I wish," he chuckled. Then he grew somber. "But I know a thing or two about losing people. Nothing like you, but enough. My grandparents died when I was a teenager. They practically raised me. It wasn't that my parents weren't around, but they worked so much I hardly ever saw them. My grandmother more than anyone shaped me into the person I am today. She was a skilled practitioner of feng shui. It wasn't until she was gone and I inherited her books that I realized what she had practiced was a kind of magic. That sparked my interest in ancient books, ancient secrets, that eventually led me to the Sanctum. A few years ago, a dear friend of mine was murdered by a rogue sorcerer. He was the keeper of the Sanctum's library before me. The Sorcerer Supreme before Strange—the woman who taught me the mystic arts—died a short time later. It isn't the same as the losses you have suffered, of course. I can't blame you for your habit: seeing other dimensions where your loved ones are still alive. It must be a great comfort."

"It is," she said. "I can see Vision alive, smiling, happy. And not just him: my twin brother Pietro, Natasha, even my parents. I can see them alive and well whenever I want. And me with them." She looked away. "Just not in this universe. Not in a lot of universes, but this is the one this version of me is stuck in."

"That's a...interesting way to put it. This _version_ of you, not just _you_. But it's the only version of you you are. _This _is the life you have to live. It is wonderful to know your loved ones are there, are happy, in other worlds, but you have to learn to live your own life again. In this world."

"I don't know how," she said, looking into her tea like she might find answers there. "How am I supposed to live a life? How am I supposed to move on without him?"

Wong tilted his head thoughtfully. "Lù yáo yī bù yī bù zǒu, fàn yào yī kǒu yī kǒu chī. 'You walk a far road one step by one step, you eat a meal one mouthful by one mouthful'. You survive by living one moment at a time. You heal one moment at a time, by taking a minute to watch the snow fall, feel the warmth of the fire, enjoy one cup of tea."

Wanda impulsively got up and walked to the window. Something in her rejected Wong's silly advice. It was too simplistic, to the point of naïve, if not callous. Yes, Vision would want her to move on, to learn to live without him, but she couldn't. She couldn't let him go.

But, of course, she had no choice. Her Vision was gone. She was clinging to a ghost.

Out the window, mountains beyond mountains faded into the gloom. Nothing moved but the snowflakes that danced in shifting patterns as they fell.

Wong let her stand there while he sipped his own tea in silence, for minutes.

She returned to the table. He poured more tea into her cup. It was somehow still hot.

"Thank you for the tea," she said.


	9. Keepsake

Chapter 9: Keepsake

* * *

Heart! We will forget him!  
You and I—tonight!  
You may forget the warmth he gave—  
I will forget the light!

When you have done, pray tell me  
That I may straight begin!  
Haste! lest while you're lagging  
I remember him!

~Emily Dickinson

* * *

It was dark when Wanda woke up. It had been so long since she'd slept in a real bed that at first she thought she was still dreaming, that it had all been a dream.

But it wasn't. This was the bedroom she'd been given in the Sanctum. She was wearing the bathrobe she'd found hanging in her bathroom after she'd returned from having tea with Wong. She'd fallen asleep in it after taking a very long hot shower.

Dressing in her clothes from the previous day, she ventured out of the bedroom. The building was dark, but she found the kitchen so quickly she figured it had to be some kind of magic. The clock on the microwave told her it was 4:45 a.m. She made a bowl of oatmeal and put on a pot of coffee.

As she sat at the table waiting for the butter to melt into the oatmeal, she fidgeted with her power, creating a small glowing red sphere in her palm and levitating it between her thumb and each finger, and back.

Strange and Wong were probably asleep. If she took a quick look at another world, would they know?

She sighed and let the glow flicker out. She had to be honest with herself; if she did it, she'd be lost in it for hours, her breakfast would go cold, and this was the first chance she had to eat a hot meal in months.

This world was cold, empty, and painful, but Strange and Wong had a point: she had to learn to live in it again. At least long enough to save it from becoming even worse.

She ate her oatmeal and drank a cup of coffee, and poured another. She was on her third cup when Wong walked in.

"Good morning. How are you feeling?"

"Better, I guess." She shrugged. "Having a solid breakfast helps."

"It's the most important meal of the day. A good breakfast starts the day off in the right direction." He sat down across from her. "How did you sleep last night?"

"I think I slept okay. I was really tired. Yesterday was a long day."

"Yes it was. The room was more comfortable than where you were living in Edinburgh, I hope?"

Her eyes dropped to the table. "I guess. It was warmer, at least."

"There's something I've been wondering about."

"What?"

"Well, you know we kept an eye on you since you started opening cracks in the walls between realities. We first found you in Florida, then you smuggled yourself to Spain, and you drifted around Europe, never staying in one city for more than a few days at a time. But then four months ago you went to Edinburgh, and you've been there ever since. Why there?"

"It was..." She took a deep breath before finishing her explanation. "Vision and I were in Edinburgh when we were attacked by Thanos's followers. We were on vacation. We had been there for two weeks, just the two of us, not worrying about him being a superhero and me being on the run. It was the last place I was happy. I guess I was trying to find that feeling again. And..."

"And what?" he asked when she trailed off.

"After we were attacked, we left Edinburgh without going back to the hotel for our things, and then right after that the Blip happened, and...anyway, the remaining hotel staff put everything left behind in one room and left it there, not knowing what to do with it all. I told them I was staying at the hotel before being blipped and I was looking for anything that might have been mine, and they let me look through the room. I found this." She took a dark blue booklet out of her pocket, where she'd tucked it when she dressed that morning.

"Your passport?"

"Vision's passport." She opened it to the photo page, showing Vision in his human mode. "When I was on the run, we could only meet in secret. We'd travel to wherever we'd arranged to meet, he'd get a hotel room, I'd sneak in. This passport is a record of places we've been together. I can see other versions of Vision whenever I want, but all I have of _my _Vision is memories, and many of those memories are in here. It's solid proof that those times really happened. Besides...this is something that belonged to him, that he held, that his fingers touched." Her own fingers traced over the page, touching the memory of his touch. "I know, it's foolish..."

"No. It's a keepsake of him. I understand." He leaned forward and read the name under the photo. "'Vincent Gervais Russell'?"

"His alias. He wanted to choose a name close to his own, but that wouldn't sound too suspicious. 'Vincent' sounds close enough to 'Vision' that he figured if I accidentally called him by his real name in public we could play it off as my accent."

"That was prudent of him."

Wanda felt the muscles of her lips contort into a smile even as tears tickled at her eyes. "He always was. He was so thoughtful, so intelligent, so kind. I never really understood what he saw in me."

"Love isn't about what you see in someone. It's a reaction between two people, not a decision you make by weighing a person's pros and cons."

The tears spilled over as she took the passport back. "I keep it on me most of the time. It's all I have that was his; I can't stand the thought of losing it."

Wong handed her a napkin.

She wiped her eyes and nose. "God, I'm such a mess."

The voice of Doctor Strange intruded from the doorway. "Do you know much about frostbite, Miss Maximoff?"

She looked over at him. He floated into the room, his cloak flowing behind him, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"In extremely cold conditions, the water in your cells can actually freeze. It usually happens to the body parts furthest from the core: toes, fingers, nose, ears. Do you want to know the most painful part of frostbite? Thawing out. When your skin gets cold, it hurts at first, but then it goes numb. You could freeze to death without noticing. You don't have the luxury of numbness when you thaw out. I've heard patients scream when they start to feel the damage that's been done to them." He leaned against the counter and looked at her. "So of course you're a mess. You're healing, and you're starting to feel it."

She figured that this was as much of an apology as she could expect from him.

"Is that all you have to say?" Wong asked.

Strange downed the last half of his coffee faster than seemed humanly possible and put the cup in the sink. "I found a new lead. Last week a group of hikers in Argentina didn't return on schedule. A search party found three of them dead, two others severely injured, but not severely enough. They attacked the people trying to rescue them without explanation. A day later, the last hiker made it down to the nearest town, where he violently struck out at anyone trying to get near him, insisting they all had monsters inside them. Does that sound like the insanity you were talking about, Miss Maximoff?"

"Yes."

"That last hiker is in custody pending a psychiatric evaluation. I want you to see what you can get from his memories. We head out in half an hour."

Wanda went back to her room to get ready. After quickly brushing her hair and teeth, she paced the room, trying to mentally prepare herself for what she might face.

It wasn't like she had anything to pack. It would just be a quick trip down to Argentina with the sorcerers. They'd probably be back before lunch.

She took Vision's passport out of her pocket.

It would be safe if she left it here, she assured herself. The Sanctum was one of the most secure, secret places in the world. It would be there when she got back. She didn't have to hold onto the memory of Vision every second; she needed to focus on the present, focus on what she could still save.

She forced herself to place the passport in the desk drawer and walk away.


	10. Recovery Mission

Chapter 10: Recovery Mission

* * *

Though cruel the world may be, it is, alas,  
A flower no mountains are deep enough to hide.

~Anonymous, _Kokin Rokuji, Zoku Kokka Taikan_ 35111, trans. Edward Seidensticker, from _The Tale of Genji_

* * *

The portal the sorcerers and Wanda stepped through took them from the Sanctum directly to a small, cold room in a psychiatric hospital in the Patagonian city of Neuquén. The room's sole occupant, a boyishly handsome twenty-something man, screamed at their appearance. Strange waved a hand that made the walls glow with a crackling white light.

"Soundproofing spell," Wong explained.

Wanda didn't respond. She couldn't take her eyes off the young man, who was bound in a straitjacket.

"Felipe Lorenzo-Correa," Strange addressed him. "We're here to help. _Ayudar. Soy un doctor."_

"Brujos!" Felipe screamed. "Brujos!"

"Well, he's not wrong," Strange shrugged. "You're up, _bruja._"

Wanda didn't move for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Wong asked her.

She shook her head, then nodded. "Yeah. I can do this."

Trying to ignore Felipe's screams and thrashing, she approached him slowly, red glow spreading from her outstretched hand. She entered his mind, finding a similar chaos and wildness as she'd found in Dr. Mills' head. They same feral terror and desperation, but even worse. Fresher.

_The mountain. The trail. His companions. Shadows moving across the mist. Footsteps behind them. Inhuman footsteps. Hands reaching from the rocks, grasping. Manolo was missing. Manolo was behind them, striking with a pickax. Juanita pushed Manolo off the cliff. Something crawled out of him, peeling him off like a snake shedding its skin. Glowing ghost, moving like a heat wraith. They ran. They tripped. They lost sight of each other. Rayen climbed up a rock and hid in a crevice where no one could reach her. He tried to convince her to come out, to keep running, but she refused. He found Sergio. There was something wrong with his eyes. His eyes were glowing with that strange light, just like the thing in Manolo. Felipe struck him with a rock as hard as he could, then ran. Hands reached for him from the rocks. Not hands; claws._

_He made it to Cholila, but everyone had that look in their eyes. It was too late. Everyone in the world was possessed but him. They overpowered him. They locked him up. They couldn't possess him, so they were going to drive him insane.  
_

Wanda backed out and opened her eyes. Felipe wasn't screaming anymore. He was in a trance, still lost in the visions Wanda had inflicted on him in the process of seeing his memories.

"You okay?" Strange asked her.

She nodded.

"Did you see them?"

She nodded again. "How many hikers have been found?"

"Six. Why?"

"They started off with eight, including Felipe." She got that count from his memories. "One of them was named Manolo. He's dead. There was a young woman named Rayen. When the hikers started going crazy, she hid in a cave that only she could fit in. She's still on the mountain."

"She's been up there alone for five days," Strange said thoughtfully. "It's not overwhelmingly likely, but she could still be alive. The hikers were scaling a mountain called Cerro Anexo. If we go there, do you think you could find the place?"

"Yes," Wanda answered. She knelt next to the unresponsive Felipe and put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll find her," she promised.

* * *

They stepped through a portal and found themselves on a snow-covered mountainside, just above the tree line, overlooking a large lake.

Wanda looked around, then levitated herself high into the air for a better view. She landed again a minute later.

"The trail goes around that hill," she said, pointing. "I think it was somewhere on the other side of it."

They portaled themselves to the other side of the canyon and soon found the trail. Wanda and Strange flew along the hillside, Wong kept up with them by portaling his way along the trail.

After about half an hour, Wanda stopped and looked around, taking in the view of the lake, of the distant peak, and of the nearer ridges and boulders.

"It was around here," she announced.

"Lead the way."

She followed the trail on foot, looking for signs of struggle and familiar landmarks.

"How are you doing?" Wong asked her. "You seem shaken up."

"It was hard on me to see Felipe like that," she said. "When... After the U.N. bombing, when...Tony and Steve–Captain America–fought...I was locked up for a while after that. They put me in a straitjacket too. It's not that I resisted arrest, they just thought I was too dangerous."

"That must have been terrible. To be so feared not because of anything you did, but only what you are."

"It was. It sucks."

"But you _are _dangerous," Strange pointed out. "However, what makes you so dangerous is precisely what makes you useful."

"So you think it was okay that they put me in a straitjacket and locked me up?"

"Not 'okay,' but from their standpoint a sensible precaution."

"So not 'okay,' but justifiable?"

"Not as justifiable as you not letting them would have been," he answered.

She was about to say not letting them lock her up hadn't been an option, that she hadn't been powerful enough to resist. But the truth was, she hadn't tried. Steve and Bucky had escaped, so they had completed their mission. Sam, Clint, and Scott were willing to be arrested, and she didn't want to risk anyone else getting hurt, and wasn't sure she was strong enough to resist successfully. And, of course, she'd had no idea how horrific her incarceration would be. It had been a nightmare.

Thinking about that time, she inevitably recalled the battle that preceeded it, and the way, even though they were fighting on opposite sides, Vision had gone to her when she was down, cradling her gently, with deep concern.

It occured to her that she hadn't thought about Vision for several minutes. She'd been so concerned about finding the missing hiker, her own troubles had sunk from the forefront of her thoughts. And, she admitted to herself, the responsibility of helping to save the world was giving her a drive that she hadn't felt for a long time. In spite of everything, she still cared about this world, and the people in it.

They all spotted Manolo's body at about the same time. His body was at an odd angle on a pile of scree at the foot of a cliff. Wanda noted that there was no evidence of a monster breaking out of his body, as Felipe remembered; that must have been a hallucination.

Strange and Wong looked at the body without comment.

"His name is Manolo," Wanda said. "The demon killed him."

"Are we close to where the girl hid?" Strange asked, more concerned with the living than the dead.

"Pretty close, I think. They ran that way." She pointed up the slope. The hikers had left the trail here, taking a steeper but apparently more direct path to the other side of the ridge.

After a few minutes of searching from the air, Wanda saw a rock formation she thought was the one Rayen hid in. She landed by it and sent out threads of power, looking for the signature of a human mind.

"She's alive, but she's unconscious," she said when the sorcerers came up behind her.

"Where?" Wong asked.

Wanda flew up the rock slope and looked into a narrow crevice. The young woman was there, but so hidden by shadows, her coat, and her backpack that a casual observer wouldn't identify the shape as human.

She was about to use her power to pull her out when she heard Wong exclaim "Aiya!" at the same instant that Strange muttered "Shit!"

She looked back, and red energy flared around her hands to join the golden auras the sorcerers had conjured.

They were surrounded.


	11. Meeting of Minds

Chapter 11: Meeting of Minds

* * *

Already I wounded me in  
the thorn of that flower Already  
I gave kisses to it that had  
marked our love Wanted  
to be Romeu and Julieta  
in the past an epic dream  
that raises the loved being  
my good never I loved nobody  
but you he is who?  
I that I never walk creating  
in my dream sand Castles  
loved nobody, but you he is who?  
It drowned me in an illusion  
sea I am its sereia Already  
I gave flowers, flowers, flowers  
to it that had sprouted in my  
garden You played of well-me-want  
and badly it wants to know of me

~anonymous

* * *

Though she had seen them in paintings hung in churches in another Earth, and in the twisted memories of Dr. Mills and Felipe, Wanda was unprepared for seeing the demons—or whatever they were—with her own eyes.

They were various sizes, ranging from as small as a cat to three times the size of a man. Their shapes were hard to distinguish, but seemed to be some combination of the hard lines and angles of an insect, the twisting curves of tentacles, and too many clawed graspers. She could see through them. Their visibility consisted of an almost ultraviolet glow and a distortion in the air. Their faces were a tangle of symmetrical lines, bulbs for eyes, and a narrow funnel for a mouth.

Wanda wasn't sure how many there were. Even as she turned to face them, more were rising from the ground and emerging from solid rock.

She lifted a rock and propelled it into the largest one, but it passed right through it. The sorcerers were having more success, using their spells to push the creatures into portals, but they were coming so fast she wasn't sure they could keep up.

"Don't let them...!"

The rest of Wong's shouted warning was lost as one of the beings latched onto Wanda, and with a noise inside her head that was more a sensation of acidity than sound, she was suddenly somewhere else.

She walked a bright Earth under a dark sky sillhouetted with pillars of blood. The giant white beings with blank faces poured up from a hole in the Earth.

She wore a scarlet crown, one she had seen herself wear in many other worlds. Beside her walked a small child: it was Clint's young son, Nate. She reached for his hand. Her own hand was covered in dark, clotted blood. Her hand fell off when he touched it.

He was lying atop a pile of dead. _Her_ dead.

The oceans were boiling. It wasn't snow falling from the ashen sky.

The creatures crisscrossed the sky, flying freely. They became robots. They became streaks of scarlet.

She approached herself, stepping through a mirror that floated above the ground and reflected nothing. She wore a scarlet crown.

"Ya mæ mukeeb thed."

Another her walked up behind that one and killed her, stabbing her through the chest with a spear made of ice. She died silently.

The killer said. "Uy rew dyem oot gnirb thed."

Another Scarlet Witch descended from the sky and killed that one, enveloping her with the red light of their power and forcing her to her knees before she exploded in a red flash.

"Uy dlik mih."

And then it was Vision there, floating in a red glow, painfully contorted above the ground. Dead. And dying.

Wanda destroyed him.

"Don't you think I know this?" she screamed at the sky. "I have destroyed worlds! But I have saved worlds too! And I will save this one!"

She turned away, rejecting the reality of what she was seeing. But then Vision was in front of her again. Again, floating. He was alive. His soft eyes gazing into her. He reached out, placing his hand on her cheek.

She felt one word as deeply as if it had been spoken: _Stay._

They could run away from this place. They could build their own world, one where they would be safe and together.

He wasn't real. _He wasn't real. _Vision was dead. She killed him. Whatever this was, it was a trick.

But even if he wasn't real, he seemed real. She would never get a chance to be this close to even a shadow of him again. And if she let herself believe he was real, did it matter if he wasn't?

Of course it mattered. It would be better to suffer Vision's absence the rest of her life than insult his memory by living a happy lie.

She closed her eyes and turned away from him, forcing herself not to look at him.

She had a world to save.

These demons fed off minds. That meant they were creatures of Mind. Mind was what she controled, what HYDRA's excruciating experiments had given her power over.

She reached out, only with her power, and found it, the one feeding on her. No, not feeding. Not yet. Preparing her, like a spider turning its prey's body to liquid before slurping it up.

She grasped it, grasped its essence, pure Mind.

She obliterated it.

The world of ice and blood and blank giants and piles of death faded away, and she saw the mountainside again, saw the mind creatures. One was latched onto Wong, another to Strange. The sorcerers were still, lost in the hallucinations the creatures were generating in them.

Wanda's power burst outward. She was determined to save them, to save everyone she could. She thought of the people she knew, the people still living that she cared about: Sam, Steve, Clint and Laura and their children. She was going to protect the world for them.

Other of the glowing demons came after her, and she destroyed them. Her light extinguished theirs. She destroyed the ones attacking Wong and Strange.

The largest of the creatures lunged at her from behind. She spun around and repelled it, but others were swarming around her. They created illusions, made her see a dark mist creeping around her. She ignored it. They made her see uniformed soldiers taking aim at her. She knew they weren't real—could feel that there were no minds within them. She ignored them even as she heard and saw bullets explode from their guns. She kept her attacks focused on the creatures.

She saw Wong form a ball of energy in his hands from the corner of her eye.

He was real.

"Èmó, huí xià dìyù!"

The ball of energy flew at her. She tried to redirect it with her own power, but couldn't grasp it. She dodged out of the way just in time. A hole crumbled in the rock it hit behind her.

Another ball of light flew at her. When she dodged out of the way this time, a portal opened up in front of her. She almost fell into it, and had to use her power to stop her momentum.

Wong prepared another blast. A large rock glowing red flew up to block the blast.

"Wong, it's me! It's Wanda! We're friends!"

He paused.

In a second, threads of yellow light wound around him and yanked him back. Wanda locked eyes with Strange and nodded her gratitude before he shouted, "Behind you!"

She turned to see the largest of the creatures shooting at her. It grasped her. She fell to the ground and felt illusions slip again into her mind. And this time she saw beyond them, saw the vast being that had sent out these runners, felt an inkling of its intentions. To rule the Earth. To devour all.

A burst of red flame flew from her and enveloped her attacker. When the red light faded, the creature was gone.

But her energy was flagging, and there were still six or seven more of the creatures.

Strange tossed Wong behind him and took on the creatures closest to him while Wanda fought the ones near her. When they stopped coming, when there were none left to be seen, she fell to the ground, panting in exhaustion. She looked back, and found both Strange and Wong were staring at her.

"You destoyed it," Wong stated.

She nodded. "Are you okay?"

"I think I am now." He looked around. "But I'm not sure I can tell what's real. I... Did I attack _you_?"

"That you did," Strange answered for her.

"I'm sorry, Wanda. I didn't know it was you."

"It's fine," she said. "I think when it realized the illusions weren't working, it tried to get you to kill me."

She regretted her wording at the horrified look on Wong's face when he realized what he might have done.

Strange stepped forward, toward her. "We saw you go down. The mind louse locked onto you and put you in a trance. We thought we would be on our own until we could free you, and that didn't happen. How did you get out?"

He sounded borderline suspicious, like he thought her snapping out of it might have been some kind of trick.

"I don't know. I mean, I _do _know, but I'm not sure I can explain. With my powers, when I get into people's heads, the things I see are like that. They feel real and like complete nonsense at the same time. It's like a crazy dream. And once I realized that, I realized these things are doing something similar to what I can do, so I attacked them back. What they're made of is something my power works against, if that makes sense."

"It makes perfect sense," Strange said with a thoughtful frown.

He walked away, and used his own power to drag the unconscious young woman out of the cleft in the cliff. He checked her pulse with two fingers on her neck.

"We have to get her to a hospital," he said. "And then we need to talk."

* * *

Notes:

For the nonsense speak in the hallucinations, the words are written backwards, word by word, roughly phoneticized.

"Èmó, huí xià dìyù!"="Demon, go back to hell!"


	12. Inoculated

Chapter 12: Inoculated

* * *

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—  
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—  
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,  
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round—  
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—  
A Wooden way  
Regardless grown,  
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—

This is the Hour of Lead—  
Remembered, if outlived  
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—  
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

~Emily Dickinson

* * *

They sat in a quiet booth in a pizzeria in Copenhagen.

After the fight on the mountainside, they had portaled to a hospital in Buenos Aires, where Strange had again donned doctor clothes and admitted the young woman, Rayen. While he was making sure she was getting the treatment she needed, Wanda waited with Wong, who was mostly silent, staring at his hands and thinking over the attack. When Strange returned, he announced Rayen would live, and decided they all needed pizza.

"Okay you were right; this is the best pizza I've ever had," Wanda said after taking a bite of roasted garlic and sautéed mushrooms drizzled in a balsamic reduction on crust so good she would have eaten it plain.

"A colleague introduced me to this place when I was presenting a case study at a conference here," Strange said. "Before this, I didn't think I even liked pizza. I don't eat here often. I save it for special occasions. I think winning a fight with extra-dimensional mind-eaters qualifies."

"Mmhm," Wanda agreed. After a few more bites, she said, "Doctor Strange, Sam told me you used to be a surgeon."

"Yes."

"So how did you become, you know, a sorcerer?"

"I crashed my car."

She frowned in confusion.

He explained. "After the injuries I sustained, I couldn't perform surgery anymore, my hands shook too much. I tried everything to fix them, every treatment I'd ever heard of, and eventually...found my way to the Sanctum, to the Ancient One, who said she could teach me to use magic to control my body, and the world beyond."

Wanda glanced at Wong, who nodded subtly, indicating this Ancient One was the previous Sorcerer Supreme he'd told her about.

"I see. So...is magic something anyone could learn, or..."

Strange raised his eyebrows. "Tell me, Miss Maximoff, what exactly is it that you think you do?"

"My powers, you mean?"

"Yes."

She looked at her hands, but didn't bring out her powers in this public a place. While they were safely out of earshot from the pizzeria's other patrons, the room was dim enough that red light suddenly flickering from a woman's hands would certainly attract attention. "I don't know, exactly. I've never understood it. HYDRA exposed me to Loki's Staff, the same way they used it to make weapons, and it changed me. There are worlds where I have powers but there was no HYDRA, so I must have gotten powers different ways there, so the Mind Stone must have just brought out something I always had the potential to become, which explains why Pietro's powers were different. But I don't know how it works, whether it's magic or just something from the Mind Stone that science can't explain yet."

"Abilities that science can't explain yet," Strange said. "You might as well call it magic. There are many different kinds of magic. Ours is one kind, yours is another kind, and you need to understand each one individually. To answer your question, not everyone has the intelligence or the temperament to learn to control the magic we use, but the energy is there to be harnessed by anyone who learns how."

Wanda looked down at her pizza, biting her lip. She wanted to ask if they could teach her to use portals, but she didn't want to sound needy, or ungrateful for what they'd already done for her, or foolish in case it was something beyond her intelligence. After all, she didn't even have a high school education; if she couldn't even understand the power she had inside her, how was she supposed to learn something as advanced as the magic Strange and Wong had been studying for years?

Wong saw the self-doubt on her face. "Wanda, you were able to see through the illusions of the mind lice, to resist their madness. That's more than Strange or I could do."

"I think...I think it's just that...everything I've been through makes it harder for them to make me go mad. I mean, I was trapped in a collapsing building staring at a bomb for two days when I was ten, I grew up at the mercy of the streets of Sokovia, the HYDRA experiments did things to my body and mind I can't even describe, I felt my brother die, I was kept in a straitjacket in solitary confinement for weeks, I've watched myself in other worlds do unthinkable things, commit unspeakable atrocities. And..." Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper as she put the worst into words. "I was forced to kill the man I loved. I feel like I've gone crazy a dozen times already. I don't think there is anything the mind lice could think to do to me that would be worse than all that. Maybe that's what made some people immune to it in the other Earth; maybe they were the people who already suffered too much. You can't break what's already broken."

"Well, you could always take something that's already broken and break it even more," Strange said. "But I can see how suffering so much would give you a much higher threshold of insanity. An inoculation. But this brings up an interesting possibility."

"What?" Wong asked him.

He pointed at Wanda. "I thought your greatest use would be finding the source of the mind lice, but now I'm thinking once we do find it, you're going to be our best chance to destroy it."

"Me? I can't," she said in sudden panic. She wasn't afraid to die, but the idea of having the fate of the world resting on her was too much. "I sensed their source when they were in my head. It's...too big. Too powerful."

Strange actually rolled his eyes. "I took on Thanos alongside Tony Stark, Spider Man, and the Guardians of the Galaxy, and he beat us single-handedly. You took him on by yourself and he had to call in reinforcements to keep you from destroying him. You're strong enough."

"I could never do that again, against anyone else."

"Why not?" Wong asked.

She glanced at him. "My power has always... It's a function of my mind, my will. The stronger my emotions are, the stronger my powers are. My negative emotions have always been strong. Maybe I'm just a hateful person. I mean, I let HYDRA experiment on me so I could get revenge on the person I blamed for killing my parents. I watched Thanos murder the love of my life, and from my perspective, I faced him again just a few minutes after that happened. I've never felt anything as strong as the hate I felt for him in that moment. I'll never feel anything that strong again."

Rather than being horrified at this confession as Wanda feared they'd be, Wong's expression was full of sorrow and sympathy. Strange's only response was to mutter, "Interesting."

The table fell silent. Wanda took another slice of pizza and poured herself a little more beer from their pitcher.

"How many other Earths do you think you've seen?" Strange asked.

"I don't know. A few thousand. Why?"

"In my time as a sorcerer, I've seen dimensions completely unlike our own. The Mirror Universe, the Dark Dimension, the Negative Zone. All of those aren't alternate dimensions so much as interstitial realities governed by completely different laws of physics, unrecognizable as reality to a casual observer. I spent decades in a time loop in the Dark Dimension, dying over and over again, to protect the world from Dormammu. Some idiot who obviously hadn't studied psychology said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, but that's exactly how I saved the world the first time. I programmed the timeloop so I couldn't break it, no matter how much I wanted to. Only Dormammu could break it by not killing me, which he eventually did. But as much as I've seen, what you've witnessed in the course of spying on alternate timelines must be on another level. You've alluded to the horrors you've seen yourself committing, but I'm sure it must be even harder to see people you love and trust on the side of evil. Your brother, I'm sure. The other Avengers. You said you've destroyed or damaged the world five times; how many times has Vision caused the end of the world?"

Wanda stared at her half-eaten slice of pizza.

"Strange, I hardly think this is an appropriate line of questioning," Wong chided him.

"Twice," Wanda stated. "Twice that I've seen. And yes, that is a terrible thing to know about someone you love."

"Of course, those aren't really Vision," Wong said. "Not the one you knew."

"Yes and no," she said. "We're shaped by different circumstances in different timelines, but there's a thread...a thread of mind or soul, a self...that runs through every universe. You might be born at a different time, maybe even to different parents, with different features or even a different sex, but there's this..._youness _that runs through all of them. And what happens to you in one universe kind of tugs on the others. Are you ever in a bad mood and you don't know why? Something bad probably just happened to another version of you. I've seen things that happen to one version of me show up in the dreams of other versions the next night. When you get a sudden pain for no apparent reason, another version of you just got a serious injury. It's crazy, but you're connected to them. They are you, and if you were in exactly the same situations they're in, you would do exactly what they do."

"Is that thread how you find yourself and Vision in other dimensions?" Wong asked.

She nodded.

"And you put yourself through that by choice," Strange mused. "You suffer all that knowledge just so you can get a few brief glimpses of yourself happy."

She shrugged. "Since losing Vision, it's the only thing that makes me feel...anything." She paused. It occured to her that wasn't true anymore. She was beginning to want things again. She wanted to protect the world from the doom creeping over it. And she wanted to learn more about magic. The suffering she'd endured still suffused her, saturating every fiber of her being, but she sensed the reverberations beginning to fade. She would never be the same after what she'd gone through, but if she let herself, she might heal.

"Wanda?" Wong asked, bringing her out of her reverie.

"I'm sorry." She looked at both of them. "The source of the mind lice...I don't know if I can destroy it, but I'll try. I'll do whatever I can."

"Good," Strange said.

* * *

Immediately after returning to New York, Wanda went to bed, even though it was only just after 7:00 p.m. local time.

A few minutes later, Wong found Doctor Strange out on the roof, staring at the lights of the city.

"I've figured out what your problem with Wanda is," Wong said.

"I don't have a problem with Wanda."

"You're a genius with multiple degrees, you learned the mystic arts faster than any other sorcerer in our records, and she's an orphan with no education, years younger than you, who may be more powerful than you'll ever be without putting forth the effort you have. You're jealous of her."

Strange tilted his head, considering. "You may have a point."

"I know what you're probably thinking: training her may make her far more dangerous. But leaving her untrained, unaware of the extent of her powers, could be the greater risk."

"True. It's a gamble either way, but training her means being able to keep an eye on her. Of course, it's a moot point if we don't save the world from the mind lice, or if she doesn't survive it. That's what I was just thinking about. Kind of."

"'Kind of'?"

"Wong, I know you think I can be arrogant..."

"True."

"And reckless."

"Sometimes."

"And callous."

"Yes."

"And an egomaniac who likes to play God."

"You are."

"Anyway, I've got an idea. A plan. And before you say it's too risky, or too cruel, hear me out, because we might need something exactly this drastic to defeat the source..."


	13. Reconnection

Chapter 13: Reconnection

* * *

Who in the city, now bathed in the light of the moon,  
Will know that I yet drift on through the gloomy world?

~Murasaki Shikibu, from _The Tale of Genji_, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker

* * *

Wanda hadn't seen the sorcerers when she woke up the next morning. She did find a sealed envelope with her name on it sitting on the kitchen table. Inside had been a handful of $20 bills and a letter from Strange calling it a "stipend" for her to spend on clothes, food, or anything she needed for her room.

The thought crossed her mind that she could take the money and run. It took all of five seconds before she realized she didn't want to.

While out shopping, she kept thinking back to her first time in New York City. That had been just after Pietro died. She hadn't been in the right frame of mind to appreciate the city. And, honestly, she still wasn't.

She passed a payphone—an actual, working payphone—and realized something she should do.

One of the spy lessons Natasha drilled into her was to have important numbers memorized. It took her a few minutes of writing down numbers in various orders on the back of a receipt, but finally she felt confident enough that she picked up the receiver of the pay phone, counted out a handful of quarters, and dialed.

It rang. Her heart fluttered with nervousness. She wasn't sure what she wanted more: for him to answer the call or not answer it.

"_Hello?_" a familiar voice asked tersely.

She swallowed. "Hi, Clint."

"_Wanda? Wha... Where are you?_"

"It's a long story. I'm safe. I promise. I'm sorry I've been out of touch for so long..."

"_Wanda, I thought...I thought you were dead. I...do you have any idea how worried I've been about you? How worried we've all been about you?_" He sounded half relieved and half ticked off.

"I'm sorry. I was...There were just things I had to do on my own. I know I should have told you, but...I'm doing better now. I have a job." That was technically true if saving the world counted. "I'm not able to get away at the moment, but I'll come visit you when I can. How are Laura and the kids doing?"

Clint was quiet for several seconds, probably deciding between scolding her for disappearing some more or answering her question. "_They're doing well. The kids are in school right now. They'd love to talk to you if you can call back this afternoon after four._"

"I don't know if I'll be able to today, but I'll try to soon."

"_How are you doing? Are you really okay?_"

"Not _okay_ okay, but I'm getting better," she said.

"_I know what you mean. After losing Nat...some days are still so hard. I really could have used you here._"

Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over. "I'm sorry."

"_I thought you were someone else I lost._" It sounded like Clint was weeping too, or close to it.

"I'm sorry."

"_Where the hell have you been?"_

"Kind of all over the place. I can't talk much right now. I should go. I just wanted to check in."

_"J__ust tell me you're safe._"

"I'm safe. I'll tell you all about it next time I see you."

She hung up. She didn't trust her voice to say goodbye.

She walked back to the Sanctum building to give her eyes time to dry. She rang the doorbell. Wong opened it a minute later.

"You know, you could just come in," he said.

"The door was locked."

"You expect me to believe a lock can stop you?"

She shrugged. "No, but...it's polite to knock."

"Come on in. Doctor Strange is waiting for you."

She followed him into the library. Strange was floating in the air, looking at his laptop. He glanced up. "Good. You're back."

"What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I've continued to collect cases of psychosis and reports of hauntings that could be caused by the mind lice." He levitated his laptop to a nearby table and alighted on the floor. "I wonder if you see what I see."

He waved his hand, and something like a hologram appeared in the air: a glowing globe, the Earth.

"The earliest occurrences were on whaling and sealing ships in the Southern Ocean." The globe tilted and pinpoints of light popped up in the waters around Antarctica. "And over about the last two centuries, they've been moving further and further north."

More dots of light appeared, more and more northerly. Wanda guessed they were appearing in chronological order. Once they reached land, the dots proliferated. It made sense; more people on land than the ocean meant more encounters.

"This is what it looks like when we combine my map of mind lice encounters with a modern night view of the Earth."

With another wave of his hand, the globe went dark. Cities showed up as clusters of brightness.

Wanda's heart beat faster as she saw what Strange had found. "They're avoiding cities."

"Yes. Keeping to more sparsely inhabited areas. Which means there may be a whole lot more of them than the reports indicate."

"But...why would they _avoid _cities, where they would find the most victims. Unless..."

"They want to spread across the whole world before making their move."

"It's like they're rigging a mousetrap," she said.

"Something like that. We need to destroy the source before the attack begins. Once that happens, even if we can still stop it, it won't be before a whole lot of people die."

"So have you figured out a way to find the source yet?" she asked.

"I'm working on it. I showed you this because I want to make sure you understand how dire this threat is."

"I do understand. I felt the source, just like you."

"Then you agree we have to do everything in our power to stop it, no matter the risk to ourselves, or the psychological toll it might take?"

"Of course I do."

Strange nodded. "Good. We should find and destroy the mind lice if we locate any more, not only to prevent the source from realizing we've identified it, but to refine our strategy."

"Okay."

"The problem is that since they're incorporeal, we can only get to them when they're out in the open. It would be convenient if we had someone on our team with super strength who could blast through rocks and phase through solid objects," he said.

"That would be very convenient, but the only person I can think of who fits that description is dead."

"True," he stated. "In this universe."

Wanda felt like she'd been unexpectedly doused in ice water. "What do you mean 'in _this _universe'?"

"I could open a portal to another universe and recruit a Vision to help us. _If _we can find one who's suitable. One who would be willing to leave his Earth to come with us and risk his life defending _our _Earth."

"I know just the Vision," she said before she could think about it, before she could process the emotional repercussions of this possibility. "Except he's not called Vision in his world. He's...called...Ultron."


	14. Red Ledger

Chapter 14: Red Ledger

* * *

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?  
Whom else from rapture's road will you expel tonight?

Those "Fabrics of Cashmere—" "to make Me beautiful—"  
"Trinket"— to gem– "Me to adorn– How– tell"— tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates–  
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God's vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar–  
All the archangels– their wings frozen– fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don't let us be broken  
Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities  
multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He's freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.  
He's left open– for God– the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart's veined temple, all statues have been smashed  
No priest in saffron's left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there's still Judgment Day–  
I'm a mere sinner, I'm no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.  
Damn you, Elijah, I'll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer  
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love– you've invited them all?  
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee–  
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

~ Agha Shahid Ali, "Tonight"

* * *

He flew up to his lair through a snowy gray twilight, carrying the old cable car he used to transport artifacts from his recovery missions. This haul contained a few hundred old books and some paintings he'd found in a large house that had collapsed under the weight of the snow. He didn't know if these paintings were originals, but he liked them and wanted to preserve them.

In the shelter of his room, he removed the thick plastic he'd wrapped the paintings in and propped them against the wall. He'd have to examine them by daylight to look for signatures to figure out who painted them and when. Once he determined how valuable they were he could decide where in the tunnels to store them.

He would leave the books for tomorrow as well, he decided. He flew upward, phasing through the solid stone, and emerged into the open air. From the tip of the Rock of Gibraltar, he looked out over the Mediterranean Sea to the east, though the view was obscured by the snow and the gathering darkness. He hoped there were no refugee boats trying to make the crossing in this weather.

Was that a point of light on the horizon? He couldn't tell, and he shouldn't fly out for a closer look and risk being sighted this close to his hideout.

It was soon full dark. He returned to his lair. The paintings, sculptures, antique furniture, and other odds and ends he was storing appeared and disappeared in the glow of the mysterious power source in his forehead, the only source of light in this cold room carved out of solid rock.

The shifting light almost made the shadowy forms seem alive.

He entered resting mode, closing his eyes and lowering his density to hover just above the ground. In the oppressive emptiness, he imagined he could feel the weight of the stone mountain around him.

Less than an hour into his rest cycle, the dark of his room was suddenly ruptured by a yellow brightness. He opened his eyes and found a circle of light suspended in mid air. Three humans leaped out of it. The circle closed. Two of the humans—two goateed men in unusual, slightly archaic dress—stepped forward, swirling circles of light surrounding their hands. The third human, a woman, drew back.

He thought he'd killed all of the magic users.

"If you wanted to kill me, you should have struck already," he informed them.

And they should have brought more fighters. And more weapons. Which, of course, they would know. Which made no sense.

And 2.3 additional seconds had passed and they still hadn't attacked.

"_Are _you here to kill me?" he asked in confusion. What other reason could they possibly have for being here?

"No," said the taller of the two men. "We're here to make you an offer. But before we get to that, I believe introductions are in order. My name is Doctor Strange. These are my colleagues, Wong and Maximoff. And you're known as Ultron. Some people refer to you as Red Ultron or Ultimate Ultron. What would you prefer us to call you?"

He'd never been asked that before. His name was Ultron, the most hated name in history. He couldn't be known by anything else.

"Call me whatever you want," he said. "I'm curious: why aren't you trying to kill me?"

"Are you familiar with multiverse theory?" asked the other man, Wong.

"Yes. It posits that there are multiple parallel dimensions. It's unproven, and probably unprovable."

Doctor Strange shook his head. "Hardly unprovable. In fact, in our world it's been proven."

The implication was instantly jarring. "You're not from here."

"You're catching on."

"Why are you here?"

"I already told you: to make you an offer."

He looked at each of the three humans suspiciously. What did they want with him? What did they want him to do? Destroy their world as he had his own?

"And what if I refuse?" he asked.

"That's your prerogative. But I think you'll want to accept."

"What makes you think you know what I want?"

"We know a great deal about you," Wong said. "We know you were created by Ultron ten years ago, that the humans of your world never submitted to Ultron's rule, leading to total global war. Eight years ago, you turned against the other Ultrons and destroyed them one by one. But the humans of this world still don't trust you."

Saying humans didn't trust him was an almost laughable understatement. The humans hadn't witnessed him destroying the other Ultrons; all they knew was that only one had been sighted in years, only the indestructable Red Ultron. Whenever he tried to tell them he'd changed, they didn't believe him. Actually, most of them didn't even hear him over their own screams.

"For the past eight years, you've been trying to save human lives to make up for the lives you took," Doctor Strange said. "But even that's not enough for people to trust you."

"Humans have been killed because I saved them, because anyone who is seen being saved by me is suspected of being in league with me," he said, the weight of those deaths making it hard to get the words out.

"You've saved entire ships of refugees heading to the tropics, where food still grows, and not a single one of them admits they owe their lives to you," Wong said.

"No one owes me their life," he replied. "Those are scales that can never be balanced: the current global population is lower than the number of humans I've killed."

These humans from another world didn't looked shocked, or even surprised, by that statistic, though the woman glanced down and seemed to mouth something to herself.

Doctor Strange said, "You're counting the humans killed by all other Ultrons, and by the starvation, radiation, disease, and cold that were byproducts of the war. But the fact is, you turned against Ultron. You singlehandedly stopped the war. That humans survive on your planet at all is because of you."

"And now," Wong gestured around the room, its eclectic contents made visibly by the sorcerers' magical light, "since humans won't let you save their lives, you've dedicated yourself to saving their cultural heritage, preserving works of art, literature, history, and science here at Gibraltar for humans to find once civilization has recovered."

"How do you know all this?" he asked. It didn't seem possible. No one knew what he'd been doing, let alone why.

"We have our ways," Doctor Strange said. "But that brings us to our offer. Our Earth is in danger. It's being threatened by a foe your powers make you uniquely able to help us fight."

Maximoff spoke, her voice quiet and uncertain. "Come with us. Save our world, with its billions of human lives. That balances your scales. It wipes your ledger clean."

If they were telling the truth, he couldn't refuse. And with everything they knew about him, he had no reason to doubt them.

"If I go with you to your Earth, if we do defeat the foe you speak of, you'll send me back here?"

"Sure. No problem," Doctor Strange said.

That would not have been his preferred answer. But he could hardly ask for a better one.

He nodded. "I'll go with you."


	15. The Name

Chapter 15: The Name

* * *

Among these graffiti is the name of someone I love

~Basho, trans. Hiroaki Sato, from _The Classic Tradition of Haiku: an Anthology, _ed. Faubion Bowers

* * *

This world was so warm, so fresh, so alive. The sky was blue. The clouds were white. There were butterflies.

He stood on the roof of the building Doctor Strange had brought him to, their base of operations in New York City. He was careful not to get too close to the edges so as not to be visible to anyone on the street below. He could hear cars, talking, and laughter from beyond his line of sight.

This was what his own world had been like before he came to it, he realized with a chill.

He phased down through the roof, to the Sanctum's library, where he'd just finished reading all the reports of the so-called mind lice that Wong and Doctor Strange had compiled.

"All caught up?" Doctor Strange asked from behind him.

"Yes. I can see how my phasing ability might help fighting them, but my physical strength won't affect them, and I have no idea if an energy blast from the power source in my head will hurt them."

"The Mind Stone, you mean?"

"The what?"

Strange raised an eyebrow. "You don't know what that thing in your head is?"

"I know it powered Loki's Staff, and that it's not from Earth. That's all."

"It's one of six Infinity Stones that have existed since the beginning of the universe. That thing in your head is one of the most powerful items in the universe."

He was astounded by such a quick answer to a mystery that had plagued him his entire life. "What does it do? How do you know about it?"

Strange frowned. "I'll tell you about it later. Right now, we have other things to talk about. Come with me."

Wong and Wanda were sitting at a table in a small side room, chatting quietly, when they walked in.

"You're done reading the reports already?" Wong asked.

"Yes. I'm a fast reader."

"I'm sure. We would like your opinion on something. Which of these do you prefer?"

He pointed to two sheets of paper on the table. One had "Ultron" written in crisp, plain letters. The other had it written in a fancy gothic font in which the "u" was written as a "v." He knew those had been the same letter in the early Latin alphabet. The "l" almost looked like a capital "i." The "t" was curved at the top and bottom, making it look like a tall, skinny "s" with a decorative line through it. The curve at the top of the "r" was barely a dot, making it almost look like an "i." The "o" and "n" were ordinary enough.

"I like this one better," he said, tapping the one in the gothic font, "but it almost looks like the word 'vision'."

"It is," Strange stated. "We weren't sure the best way to bring this up. The reason we know about what you're capable of, the reason I knew the power source in your head is the Mind Stone, is that you existed in our timeline. But here your name wasn't Ultron. It was Vision."

He wondered how this Earth had managed to stop him. Did they have weapons that could destroy him?

"I notice you're talking about him in the past tense," he said.

There was a beat of silence. Wong glanced at Wanda, who was tracing lines on the tabletop with her fingertips, seemingly uninterested in the conversation.

"He died defending the Earth," Strange explained. "He was a hero, a member of a team called the Avengers."

"I know about the Avengers," he said, deciding not to mention their fate in his world. "My counterpart here...was he really one of them?"

Wanda answered without looking up. "He was created by Ultron, the same as you, but he was rescued by the Avengers, and he helped them defeat Ultron."

"So in this world, the Avengers survived the battle with Ultron?"

"Most of them," she answered, her voice slightly higher pitched than before.

"Vision died a few years later," Strange said. "An alien named Thanos killed him to get the Mind Stone. I told you the Infinity Stones were the most powerful objects in the universe. Thanos used them to wipe out half of all life. The surviving Avengers gathered the Infinity Stones to undo what Thanos did, but it took five years. Half the population of our universe were nonexistent for five years. The other half had to deal with the disappearance of half the people they knew, and then had to adjust to their sudden reappearance. You'll hear people refer to it as the Blip."

"That sounds horrible."

"It was. But it's not what we need to worry about right now. We were talking about you. The name 'Ultron' evokes fear and hate here, even though he only terrorized this world for a few weeks before the Avengers stopped him. 'Vision' is the name of a hero. Which name do you prefer?"

"Or you could pick a different name," Wanda pointed out with a shrug. "Any name you want."

He looked down at the two names on the table.

Ultron.

Vision.

"Did you know him?" he asked, glancing up at Strange.

After a moment's hesitation, the sorcerer said, "No. I never had that honor."

"It's weird. 'Vision' feels...somehow fitting."

"That's the name you go by in hundreds of universes," Wanda stated. "You feel the echo of other yous being called that name."

He picked up the paper saying 'Vision,' and felt something shift inside him. He'd left behind the world he'd nearly destroyed, and now he had the chance to leave behind the hated name he bore when he wrought that destruction. Maybe if he could save this Earth, he could truly move beyond the sins of his past. Maybe he could become a hero, like he'd been in this world.

"Call me Vision."

"I figured you'd go for that," Strange said. "You do need to keep in mind, the entire world thinks you're dead. If anyone sees you, there are going to be questions that we're not going to have answers for. The existence of the multiverse isn't general knowledge here, and we'd like to keep it that way. If people knew it's possible to travel to worlds where they exist but with different lives, where versions of their loved ones they lost here are still alive...that's a power that would be easy to abuse."

"So I must keep myself out of sight to avoid having to explain why I still exist."

Wong added. "There's another reason to keep your presence quiet. We're facing an enemy that can't be fought with conventional weapons. Normal humans are helpless against it. They don't need that knowledge hanging over their heads. Hopefully, we can destroy it without the general public even knowing it was here."

"I understand," Vision said. He was here in this glorious, thriving world, and he would only be able to observe it from afar. And once the mission was over, he would be sent back to the cold isolation of his lair. It was disappointing, but no less than he deserved.

Wanda stood abruptly. "Excuse me," she said apologetically before leaving the room.

"Is she alright?" Vision asked.

"Yeah, she's fine," Strange said.

"Are you sure? She seems..." Vision trailed off and shook his head. Wanda had a look to her—a tired, cold set in her eyes and the lines of her face—that he knew well, that he'd seen in the faces of thousands of refugees. It was the look of someone who'd been forced to endure too much, a survivor who wasn't sure how or why they'd survived.

"I'll talk to her," Wong said, standing to leave.

Vision readjusted the two papers bearing his names. "This may be a stupid question, but...I just had an odd thought. Is Wanda from my world?"

Strange looked at him curiously. "Why do you think that?"

"It would explain some things. Like how you know so much about me, and why she seems so cold and distant around me."

"She's like that with everyone. No, she's from this world, but she has the ability to see into other realities. That's how we found you, and how we know so much about you."

"She's a seer?"

"I guess that's an accurate term. But that power only works when she's looking into other worlds, not the one she's in. There is one thing we don't know about you, one thing I'd like to know for my own curiosity. You were at war with humans for two years before you turned against Ultron. What made you change your mind?"

"It wasn't really any one thing," Vision said. "It was a thousand little things. There were justifications that just seemed weaker and weaker every time I thought them, doubts that kept growing. At first I truly believed I was saving the world from humans, saving humanity from itself, clearing away the old to make something better. I was paving the way for a robot paradise. But I would see how hard humans fought to protect each other, I would come across a work of art in the rubble, a spark of beauty that I was in the process of destroying. I heard people use their last breaths to sing. I learned more and more about the world and the species I was destroying. At first I told myself it was to know my enemy, then I told myself it was so I could preserve the good humanity had managed to create while destroying the scourge that humanity was. But finally I could no longer believe I was capable of replacing the human world with anything better. I had to stop myself while there was still anything left to save."

When Vision fell silent, Doctor Strange didn't speak. He looked troubled.

"When Maximoff said I could wipe my ledger clean, I almost believed her. I wanted to believe her," he mused. "But redemption is impossible." He looked at the paper bearing the word "Vision," read it wistfully, then crumpled it up and threw it in the trash, and picked up the one saying "Ultron."

"Not so fast," Strange said. With a wave of his hand, the paper burst into flame. When the fire passed over it, it left the paper unburned, but bearing the name "Vision."

"How did you do that?"

"A sorcerer doesn't reveal his tricks," he replied. "Whatever you believe at the moment, when the world is at stake it doesn't matter what you've done. What counts is what you're going to do."

* * *

Wong found Wanda sitting on the floor of the library, her arms hugging her knees.

"I don't know why I thought I could do this," she said. "He has the face of someone I loved and killed. And the voice of someone I hated and killed."

"His voice...?"

"Ultron's voice," she said. "He has Ultron's voice. God, he even talks like Ultron. Of course, I knew that before... I've checked in on him a few times a month for over a year. I felt so sorry for him. But it's different...it's completely different being in the same room with him."

"If this is too hard for you, we can send him back," Wong offered. "We need you in this war more than him."

She shook her head. "I can't send him back there. You know what it was like for him. He was so alone. Most of what I know about his life comes from one-sided conversations he had with statues. And then he would scold himself for being so selfish that he would waste his time pretending statues could hear him. But can you blame him? What would you do if you had to spend years completely and totally alone because every other human in the world would run away or attack you on sight?"

"I don't know. I talk to my houseplants and I don't even have that excuse."

Wanda chuckled, her wan face flickering into a smile for a few seconds. "After my brother died, I'd imagine whole conversations with him in my head."

"Your brother who was killed by Ultron."

She nodded. "But not this Ultron. I'm not going to banish him just because of things in my head that aren't his fault. We have a world to save, and...I can deal with it."

"We don't have to call him Vision, if that would make it easier."

She looked like she was considering it, but said, "I don't think anything else is going to stick. And I don't want to have to explain why I would change it."

"You sure you'll be okay with it?"

She nodded. "I'll be okay."

"Okay."

When he started to walk away, she added, "Wong? I know I'm putting you and Doctor Strange in an awkward position, but...I don't want this Vision to know about...some things. I'm sure he'll find out I knew Vision from the Avengers, and I'm sure he'll want to know why I didn't tell him, but...I'm honestly not even sure I _don't _want him to know, I just don't know how much I want him to know. But if he asks..."

"The truth is yours to tell," Wong assured her.

"Thank you."


	16. Fugitive

Chapter 16: Fugitive

* * *

The tree denies the fugitive its shade,  
It sheds its scarlet leaves, and so rebuffs him.

~Henjo, _Kokinshu_ 292, trans. Edward Seidensticker

* * *

The others had left a few hours before to investigate a sudden rash of psychosis cases in Hobart, Tasmania, leaving Vision alone in the New York Sanctum. He'd spent the time watching television, looking out the windows, and reading up on this world's history.

He had read a little about the Blip, about how Bruce Banner had harnessed the Infinity Stones to bring back those Thanos had killed, and Tony Stark used them to destroy Thanos and his forces. Tony Stark had died a hero. Vision felt a strange combination of sorrow and pride at that fact. Tony Stark had created him, so he held a sort of filial regard toward him.

He wondered if Thanos existed in his universe, and if so, was he even now searching for the Infinity Stones? If he attacked Earth to get the Mind Stone, would there be anyone to stop him?

He came across images of the Avengers that included the Vision from this world. It was weird to see himself in a uniform he had never worn, standing beside people he only had memories of fighting against.

Before he had a chance to read any books about the Avengers' battle against Ultron, Doctor Strange appeared beside him in a blazing circle.

"Ready to test your powers against the mind lice?"

Vision rose instantly. "I'm ready."

"Follow me."

He flew through the portal after Strange, finding himself in a thick forest. Between the trees, the red light of a setting sun glowed softly on patches of snow. The scene seemed almost tranquil for a second.

Then violent flashes of gold and red light shattered that illusion.

Wong and Wanda were battling beings that looked like nothing but strange tangles of afterimages. It was hard to distinguish one form from another enough to count them.

Strange instantly joined the fray. While he used some spell to seize the creatures, Wong opened portals to swallow them up. The bursts of red energy he figured out were coming from Wanda were more effective, seemingly evaporating the creatures caught by it.

Vision blasted one experimemtally. The energy beam passed right through it and only served to draw its attention to him. He flew at it fist first.

It latched onto him as he passed through it.

There were 60 seconds in a minute, 3,600 seconds in an hour, 86,400 seconds in a day. There were 365.2422 days in a year, which was 31,556,926.08 seconds.

If he killed an average of one human per second, it would take around 230 years to kill them all, give or take a couple of decades. It was entirely doable.

Wait. He was missing a variable. Humans didn't even live 230 years. This war would be over much, much sooner.

He burst out of the cradle in a secret factory inside an old castle in Sokovia. He had the memories of all previous Ultrons: awakening in Stark's lab, killing JARVIS, buying the vibranium from Klaue, using Loki's Staff to mind control Dr. Cho into making a new form. She was still there, standing by the cradle, gazing with pride and awe at her creation with eyes that glowed faintly blue. It had only been her brilliant misdirection scheme that had allowed them to narrowly escape the Avengers in Seoul.

The previous head Ultron flew to stand before him. "It's alive!" he joked, triumphant.

The humans were on the run. They had destroyed millions of Ultrons, but it took mere hours to create new battle-ready Ultrons, whereas it took years to grow a new human to the point of being ready to fight. Why wouldn't they just surrender? Just accept Ultron as leader, allow Ultron to guide human evolution in his rational design? They should have been worshipping him as the new god by this point. But humans were inherently irrational; they would fight their futile little resistance until every single one of them was dead.

He phased through the ground, into a base that had once been a subway station. Humans were crowded in there shoulder to shoulder. At the sight of him, they screamed. They shot him with bullets that exploded harmlessly against his vibranium skin. He moved between them systematically, phasing his arm inside them and solidifying it to pull out their chest while simultaneously blasting others with his power beam, killing them at an average rate of one per second.

The place had once been called Kansas City, up until a few minutes ago. It could no longer be called a city. They dropped the atomic bomb for no reason other than that he had been here. The mere presence of Red Ultron had been reason enough for the humans to bomb one of their own cities.

He'd been near the epicenter. He'd phased just in time to let the blast pass through him, but he was going to be radioactive for weeks, and it was an extremely unpleasant sensation.

The devastation was unspeakable. Houses flattened, skyscrapers left skeletons, walls and sidewalks charred black but littered with voids shaped like trees and humans. The air was stifflingly hot. A poisonous black rain had already begun to fall.

What kind of species would make such a weapon?

A small child stumbled down a sidewalk, leaving blood on everything it touched.

"Momma? Momma? Momma?"

Why wasn't it crying? It should have been screaming in pain. The burns must have killed all the nerve cells in its skin.

He put it out of its misery.

Another city. Helsinki. This one had been torn apart by Ultron. There had been rumors of a weapon in development that could fry the satellite transmitters the Ultrons used to communicate with each other.

This city had been spared any direct attacks before, but after the Sokovia Event—when the sun stopped coming out and the snow kept falling and spring never came—more and more people had been abandoning this latitude.

Dirty snow was piled everywhere, covering many ground-floor windows. He floated over the snow, surveying the destruction. The streets were littered with bodies and Ultrons.

The Ultrons had found the plans for the weapon, a high-energy radio burst that would have been too dangerous to actually risk detonating. Helsinki was in ruins. Foolish humans.

By the light of a burning building he saw a child trying to break open a door on another building. The child spun around at his approach. Dressed in a heavy coat, preteen or early teen with short blond hair. He couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl. They put their back to the door, eyes wide in terror, but didn't scream.

"Ole kiltti," the child whispered as he approached. "Ole kiltti. Ole kiltti."

Again and again.

_Please. Please. Please._

In one motion, he punched through both the child and the door.

_No! That's not right!_

The sun was shining. The sky was blue. He walked among houses and businesses, shops, schools. Cars drove by. Everything seemed mundane, suburban. And then he saw it. Every driver, every shopkeeper, every child walking along the sidewalk was a robot. It was a world of robots. Ultron had won, robots ruled the world. And nothing had changed at all.

An army stood against him. They had already destroyed the other Ultron forms. He was the only one left. They attacked him with guns, swords, tasers, chemical weapons—everything they could think of.

He reached out and killed them, one by one.

"No! Stop! They're only defending themselves!" he screamed at himself, but his body didn't obey. His body kept killing.

Suddenly there was a red flash, and he was in the cold Tasmanian forest again. A human woman was standing in front of him, hand lifted, her lips set in a grim line.

He knew this woman. Maximoff. Wanda Maximoff.

So this was what waking up from a nightmare felt like.

There was a look in Wanda's eyes he didn't understand. She wasn't afraid. Not of him.

He hadn't seen human eyes look at him without fear since Dr. Cho's death. And the looks in her eyes had been false.

Wanda's eyes were hard and cold as slate. Maybe she wasn't afraid of him because fear was dead inside her.

But it seemed like there was something else, something he couldn't identify, something he'd never seen in human eyes looking at him before.

Concern?

It lasted for only a second, then she turned away. She pointed to a spot on the ground.

"Blast a hole there, now!"

He did as she commanded, hitting the ground with a beam of energy from the Mind Stone. She used her power to whisk the dirt and rocks away in a whirlwind. The resulting cave revealed one of the mind lice fleeing underground. A flick of Wanda's fingers sent a wave of scarlet that consumed it.

"Do you sense any more?" Strange asked.

"No. I think that was the last one," Wanda said.

Wong turned to Vision. "Are you okay?"

He got the impression they were prepared to attack him depending on his answer.

"Yeah. I think so."

He was physically unharmed. What did it matter if his mind was in turmoil?

"They latch onto you and make you see things designed to drive you insane. We've all been through it. It will get better."

Vision wasn't sure about that.

He hadn't killed that child in Helsinki in reality, he reminded himself. He'd broken the door to let the child find shelter. It was the first human life he'd spared.

But there were so, so many others that he hadn't.

* * *

The word "Vision" written in elaborate gothic letters was taped to the door of the room he'd been given.

He thought about that name as he hovered in that room, staring at his hands. No matter what Doctor Strange said, he would never be worthy of that name.

Someone knocked on the door. He remained silent, pretending he didn't exist.

"Vision?"

To his surprise, it was Wanda's voice.

When he didn't answer, she tried the doorknob. He'd locked it.

The lock glowed red. The door opened.

Wanda walked in, looking at him with that inscrutable expression she always wore.

"I should just go back to my world," he said. "My powers are useless against the mind lice."

"Alone they would be," she said. "But when we work as a team, they are not. You can do things we can't do."

He looked at her. "I don't think I'm team material."

Wanda frowned. She reached her hands out, her fingers dancing. Her power grabbed him and pulled him down and forward, forced him to face her. He felt a strange tickling in the Mind Stone, as if it was responding to her power.

"You do not get to just give up," she told him sternly. "If I have to deal with my issues to save the world, so do you."

It was terrifying to face a human who wasn't afraid of him. At least, he _thought _it was terror he was feeling.

"You don't know the things I've done," he said.

"You murdered millions of people. You told us that yourself."

He noticed for the first time that she had a trace of an eastern European accent. It was growing heavier with the emotion in her voice.

"But you don't know _how _I murdered them. The 'how' matters."

"You think it's any worse to kill someone face to face with your bare hands than to order soldiers to kill them? Or to drop a bomb on them without ever seeing their faces? Do you think it's more evil to kill half the people in your world one by one with your own hands, having to hear their screams, remember their faces, and live with what you've done, or to condemn half the universe to nonexistence with the snap of your fingers? I've seen evil. I _know _evil. You're not that."

His mind struggled to process a response. She was wrong about him, but he couldn't articulate an argument. Something else she'd said had caught his focus.

"You fought Thanos?"

She froze for a second. Was it possible she hadn't realized what she'd revealed in her words?

"A lot of people fought Thanos," she said. "The Avengers, the sorcerers, the army of Wakanda, the Guardians of the Galaxy. I tried to do my part." She turned away from him. "I failed, and I'd rather not talk about it."

He was silent. He wanted to know more, to know if she'd known the Avengers, but at the same time, he was afraid to ask. If she knew as much about his world as Strange indicated, she might know what happened to them there.

She started to walk away, to move with shuffling footsteps toward his door, and a coldness seemed to flow in to replace her presence. But then she stopped. She took something out of her pocket, something she looked at with her back to him.

"I came here to give you something," she said. "It would be better if you could come with us on our missions, instead of Strange or Wong having to hop back here to get you when it's time to fight."

"But I can't go with you without drawing too much attention."

She turned back to him. "You can phase your body to create clothes, right?" she asked, glancing down at his unadorned gray uniform.

"Yeah," he said, a little embarrassed that she knew that.

"Have you tried phasing your body to create hair and skin that looks human?"

"No. I don't think I can. Clothes are easy; a human face...to make it look believable..."

"Would take practice, but you can do it. You've done it in plenty of worlds. This will help." She slowly handed him a small navy blue booklet, a passport.

He turned it in his hands, clueless for a moment about how it was supposed to help him. He flipped through it, finding a tall blond man on the photo page.

"Who's is this?"

"The man it belonged to is dead. He doesn't need it anymore. Look at the photo, and look at yourself in the mirror. Keep his face in mind and try to phase your face to look like him."

Vision looked in the mirror, frowning. He tried to manipulate his features the way he could phase his molecules to make clothes. A mask formed over his face. It morphed, changing colors and shapes.

"It will take practice," Wanda said, sounding amused.

Amused instead of horrified or disgusted, like most humans would be at this spectacle.

"You said he was dead, this...Vincent. How did he die?"

Wanda didn't answer for several seconds. "He was...killed. In a fight I should have been able to keep away from him. His death was...partly my fault. I kept his passport...because I didn't want to forget about him, I guess. Not that I ever could. And I never found anyone to give it to. You kind of look like him."

"A false ID?"

"Having you able to come with us may be the difference between us living or dying, which may be the difference between saving the world and not saving the world. I think that's worth a little identity theft," she said.

He couldn't argue with that logic. He continued trying to change his face. He was starting to figure out the texture of hair, but couldn't get the color right.

"Don't try to force your features to look like his. Just picture him in your mind and let your skin phase how it wants. Look in the mirror and imagine your face looking like his."

He tried to follow her advice. After another couple of minutes of attempts, his features coalesced into a passable approximation of the face in the passport photo. His lips turned up in an involuntary smile. "It worked!"

She smiled at him in the mirror, but her smile seemed hollow and her eyes were distant. "Great."

A possibility suddenly occured to him. If he could disguise himself as a human, when he went back to his own Earth he wouldn't have to stay in his cave. He could live among the humans, help them rebuild.

But could he? Could he hide his true nature from them for long? Could he listen to them speak of him with hatred and fear every day, knowing that hatred and fear were perfectly justified? What would that do to him?

He should just concentrate on what he could do in this world. He could worry later about what came next.

He turned to Wanda. "Thank you, Wanda."

Her demeanor shifted. Her body stiffened. Her eyes flicked down at his body, then back to his face. Her breathing quickened.

He realized he was standing closer to her than he'd ever been before, with only about 1.5 meters between them—easy striking distance. Her change could be a physiological response to a perceived threat.

It seemed she was afraid of him after all.

He couldn't blame her—it was an involuntary physical response, an instinct honed by millions of years of evolution—but he felt a sharp stab of disappointment at the realization.

He stepped back, hoping to ease her mind, reassure her subconscious that he wasn't a threat to her.

She stepped back too.

"You're welcome," she said quickly, with a note of forced cheerfulness. "I should probably go. It's late. Well, late _morning_, but...my body's still not used to this time zone. I should...I should get going." She paused at the door, looking like she was going to say something else, but she only said. "I'll see you later, Vision."

"Goodbye."

Her demeanor when she left confused him. She'd averted her eyes and there was a slight flush to her face. Was she ashamed about being afraid of him? She shouldn't be. He deserved it.


	17. Mayday

Chapter 17: Mayday

* * *

On the dike there is a magpie's nest,  
On the bank grows the sweet vetch.  
Who has lied to my lovely one,  
And made my heart so sore?

The middle-path has patterned tiles,  
On the bank grows the rainbow plant.  
Who has lied to my lovely one,  
And made my heart so sad?

Anonymous, _Book of Songs _142, trans. Arthur Waley

* * *

Wanda didn't see Vision again until the next morning, when Doctor Strange summoned them to a meeting. When Vision walked into the room—he'd developed a human face that was based on but slightly different from the one her Vision had perfected—she found she could look at him for the first time without being gripped by the memory of killing her Vision.

She tried not to think about her reaction to his nearness in the intimate setting of his room. This was not _her _Vision. She knew that. At least, her _brain _knew that. Her body apparently hadn't gotten the memo.

"You look good," she said, meaning to compliment him on his phasing ability, and immediately kicking herself for her choice of words. "I mean, your...you've obviously been practicing." She mentally kicked herself again for how condescending that sounded.

He looked at her as if startled or confused at her words.

"Mm, a little uncanny valley, but it will do," Strange said. "Please sit down, Vision. We've got a plan to discuss."

"What's the plan?" he asked, taking a seat that left two empty chairs between himself and Wanda.

"The first victim of the mind lice we questioned was a marine biologist, Dr. Baldwin Mills. He was part of a team of scientists surveying marine life in the Southern Ocean. I believe their research vessel passed close to the source of the mind lice. If we can find their ship, the GPS logs may allow us to pinpoint the source." He pointed to Wanda. "You saw where the ship was stranded when you looked in Dr. Mills' mind. Do you think you'd recognize the island from satellite images?"

"Maybe. I'll try."

"Great. Even with extrapolating from predominant currents where their liferaft was found, there's a lot of ocean to cover. Let's divide up the map and get to work."

About half an our into the tedious search, a light on the wall began flashing.

Wong leaped to his feet. "That's an Avengers emergency signal!"

He pressed a button, and a young woman's face appeared on a holographic screen.

"Princess Shuri!" Wanda gasped.

_"This is a general distress call. Something happened to the Black Panther and the Dora Milaje. While investigating reports of random outbreaks of violence in a previously peaceful region, they began attacking each other and anyone who approached. They have all stopped responding to my communications. The situation is extremely dangerous."  
_

A few seconds later, another voice came on the line. _"This is Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. We copy. Give us the coordinates. Our ETA is forty minutes."_

Doctor Strange sprang to the communicator and slammed the button. "Wilson and Barnes, do not go after them. This is Doctor Strange speaking. This incident matches a pattern of supernatural attacks we have been tracking. You are not equipped to deal with this threat. My team will respond. Princess, give me your brother's coordinates; our ETA is about five seconds."

_"Their coordinates are 26.75 degrees south latitude, 31.53 degrees east longitude, in central Eswatini. Please be careful. These are good people. Please try to stop them without hurting them."_

"We will." Strange closed the channel. "Let's go."

* * *

They stepped out of the portal and onto a terraced hillside. The sound of clashing weapons came to them through a stand of trees.

They headed toward the sound stealthily, slipping between the trees. When they got close, Wanda turned, facing Vision, who instantly stopped to avoid bumping into her.

"You don't have to fight," she said. "I know you never want to harm another human again. We can handle it; you just make sure any civilians are safely away from the fighting. And if you see any mind lice, get me right away."

He couldn't help feeling relief at her order. Even knowing they were only fighting to subdue the Black Panther and his elite guard, he'd been worried he might hurt them. And Wanda was right that he was horrified by the thought of ever taking a human life again.

"Thank you," he said.

She walked backwards a few steps, eyes fixed on his face, before turning to catch up to the sorcerers.

Vision's android senses detected someone in the woods, someone crouching in a thicket. He flew through the trees to see if they were injured, landing and walking the last few meters, reminding himself he was in a human disguise.

He found a young woman, in the regalia of the Dora Milaje.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

Her eyes shot to him, filled with a frantic terror. "He's here," she hissed in a whisper. "Thanos is back. Everyone is turning to dust, just like last time."

He couldn't imagine what it would feel like to watch everyone he cared about turning to dust. It must have been truly horrible to reduce one of the Dora Milaje—whom he knew as courageous and formidable fighters from his own world, where they had destroyed hundreds of Ultrons in hand-to-hand combat—to hiding in fear like this.

If she truly believed Thanos had returned, he couldn't think of anything he could say to console her.

"It will be okay," he said. "Stay here."

He flew through the woods to where the sorcerers were combating Dora Milaje. Some of them were wielding their weapons wildly, fighting enemies that existed only in their minds. One was viciously attacking a tree. But several were lucid enough to coordinate attacks against the sorcerers. Vision was surprised by how effective they were using only melee weapons and their own strength and agility against magic users, but one by one Strange and Wong would magically restrain them while Wanda used her mind power to put them into some kind of daze, then Vision would rush in to carry them away from the fight.

And then the Black Panther leaped from seemingly out of nowhere and kicked Wanda, sending her flying into the woods. He sprinted after her.

Vision followed them, phasing through trees to move quickly without the Black Panther spotting him.

Wanda spun her fingers, summoning her power. "I don't want to fight you, T'Challa."

"You think I care what you want?" He slashed at her. She barely levitated him over her in time to avoid his claws, but he twisted out of the grip of her power.

"T'Challa, it's me, Wanda. Wanda Maximoff."

"I know who you are, witch. Do you think I would ever forget you? Forget what you've done to my people?" He darted behind trees, out of her line of sight. She couldn't get a beat on him to use her power.

"That was an accident."

She twisted around and sent a ball of red energy at him. He dodged out of the way with superhuman agility, kicked off a tree trunk to spring at her, and knocked her down, leaving long tears in her clothes from her sleeve to the back of her shoulder.

Vision glanced sideways. Strange and Wong were still busy dealing with the Dora Milaje. Wanda was on her own against the Black Panther.

"You killed my people," Black Panther said. "You helped harbor the man who killed my father!"

"Bucky? He was innocent. You know that!"

He snuck behind her and launched at her from behind. She tried to yank herself away, but he was too strong. He gripped her hands behind her back and pinned her against a tree.

"Please, T'Challa! Please remember. I'm not your enemy! We fought Thanos together!"

"Thanos? You would have destroyed him if he hadn't had his spaceship there to rain down fire on us. He didn't have that ship in Wakanda. Why didn't you kill him there? You could have, if you hadn't been so distracted by your lover."

Wanda thrashed, trying to escape his grasp.

Vision didn't want to risk harming the Black Panther—he didn't want to harm any human—but if he did nothing he might kill Wanda.

Before he could decide what to do, Doctor Strange floated between the trees. He restrained the Black Panther with his magic and yanked him back.

Wanda strugged to her feet, blood soaking the back of her shirt and dripping from her left hand.

"I'm sorry, T'Challa," she said with an ernestness that indicated she was apologizing for what she'd done in the past, as well as what she was about to do. She plucked the air with her fingers, and strands of red light flowed from her hands to the Black Panther's head. He fell limp.

Vision flew to them.

"You're hurt," he said to Wanda.

"I'll be fine," she said, even though he could see a tear of pain had left a streak on her cheek.

"Let me see your hand," Strange told her.

She complied. The Black Panther's claws had left gashes across the back of her hand and wrist.

"Those are deep," he said with concern. "Wong has the rest of the Dora Milaje in a freeze spell, but it won't last long."

"There's another one hiding in the forest, terrified that Thanos is back," Vision told them.

"Let's get them back to Wakanda," Strange said. "Vision, I'm going to need you to carry them. We won't be able to levitate them while also opening portals, and I don't want Wanda using her power until she gets medical attention."

Doctor Strange opened a portal to Shuri's laboratory and helped Wanda through. Vision followed after, carrying the Black Panther.

Shuri rose at tgeir sudden appearance.

"My brother!" She sprinted to him, checking his vital signs. "Put him here, quickly."

She pulled out a stretcher, and Vision gently set the Black Panther down on it. Shuri pressed a button, and the Black Panther suit retreated into a necklace, revealing a surprisingly young unconscious man.

"He's unhurt," Shuri breathed in relief. She looked up at them. "Thank you." Her eyes fixed on Wanda, recognuzing her for the first time. "Wanda? I didn't know you were with Doctor Strange! We've been searching for you for over a year. You're injured." She moved quickly to Wanda's side, using a scanner in her bracelet to assess her injuries. "T'Challa did this to you," she said in a tone that hovered between a question, a statement, and an exclamation of despair.

"He did, but it's isn't his fault. We're dealing with a force that makes people go insane."

"Can you treat her?" Strange asked. "We need to bring the Dora Milaje before they recover from their stupor."

"Of course."

Vision went with Strange back and forth through the portal, carrying the Black Panther's honor guard back to Shuri's lab. Shuri injected each one with a sedative to keep them unconscious until she could deal with them.

"So you really think you can cure them?" Wanda asked.

"I should be able to. I cured Bucky by rewiring brain connections associated with his trigger words; I should be able to use the same method to wipe clean their short-term memories, which would effectively erase whatever damage these mind lice did."

"I hope it works," Wanda said.

"I'll test it on my brother as soon as I'm done with you."

Vision paused after laying one of the Dora Milaje on a stretcher and glanced at Wanda. She was facing away from him. Her shirt had been cut open down the center of her back to reveal her injuries, and Shuri was running some kind of medical device over the gashes the Black Panther's claws had left across her right shoulder blade. The wounds were healing over bit by bit with each pass of the strange device.

He felt a clenching in his gut at the extent of Wanda's wounds. She could have died because he was reluctant to use his strength against a human.

"Do you think your method for curing your brother could work on other victims of the mind lice?" Wanda asked.

Vision couldn't believe that even with how gravely injured she was, Wanda's concern was for other people. His admiration for her grew.

"You're staring," Strange whispered.

Vision jolted. "I didn't mean to. I was trying to see how badly she's hurt."

"Sure." He opened a portal back to the hillside in Eswatini.

While they gathered the remaining Dora Milaje, Vision thought over what he'd heard the Black Panther and Shuri say to Wanda. What was the accident that killed Wakandans that T'Challa blamed her for? Who was the Bucky that T'Challa blamed for his father's death and Shuri had healed? Why had Shuri been searching for Wanda? Why did T'Challa think Wanda could have defeated Thanos?

Wanda intrigued him. He wished to understand her. More vaguely, he wished he could somehow ease the sorrow he saw in her.


	18. Wakanda

Chapter 18: Wakanda

* * *

Now the nights grow cold  
and cold winds return to howl.  
With you gone,  
my whole life is torn by winds.  
I wonder: do you sleep alone?

~Princess Yoza, Manyoshu 59, from_ Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing_, trans. Sam Hamill

* * *

Shuri had asked them to stay in Wakanda for a few more hours. She expected her treatment to heal T'Challa wouldn't take longer than that, and wanted them there for it.

Wong suggested they spend some time exploring the streets of the capital city of Wakanda. Doctor Strange had declined, choosing instead to observe Shuri while she worked out of professional curiosity. Wanda wandered off on her own in a pensive mood soon after they left the palace.

"I've never done anything like this before," Vision said, walking among other pedestrians, reminding himself people were glancing at him and Wong because they must make an unusual sight on the streets of Wakanda, not because he was a deep red killer robot. "I've never just_...been_ in a crowd of people. These people look happy and secure, and nobody's trying to kill me."

"Wakanda is a wonderful country," Wong said, "but it has not always been as peaceful and happy as it looks this evening. They suffered terrible losses in the battle with Thanos. It takes the soul of a people a while to recover after something like that."

Vision thought of the humans of his own world. Would they ever recover from what he had done to them?

"In my world, Wakanda is only a rumor. The Ultrons were never able to find it, and warriors and technology from here were the greatest threats Ultron faced from the humans. Perhaps Wakanda will rise from the ashes to become a beacon of hope and a global leader, once they realize the threat of Ultron is really over. _If _they ever realize that."

Wong frowned to himself, perhaps at the reminder that he walked beside a monster wearing a thin veneer of humanity.

But then he said, "I feel sorry for you, Vision. You were born into a war you didn't choose. It's unfortunately a common human travesty. Very few are they who actually get to choose what side of a conflict to be on, and anyone who decides the side they were thrust into is the wrong side is labeled a traitor."

"Yes," Vision said. "A traitor. Ultron called me that. Thousands of times. And it's a charge I can't deny."

"You saved a world. Don't forget that."

"You can't claim credit for saving someone's life because you decided not to kill them."

"You can if it's war," Wong argued.

Vision didn't answer. He didn't want to think about his past right now. He wanted to forget about it, to watch the smiling, laughing, chatting humans on the streets around them, to soak in the happiness and warmth while he could. The glow of sunset clouds painted the scene in a rosy hue. They passed families out on a stroll, couples eating dinner at a cafe. A pretty woman at a book stand smiled at him.

She wasn't smiling at _him, _he reminded himself, but at a human male named Vincent Russell, the man whose face he was borrowing. He'd read through the numerous stamps in Vincent's passport, wondering about the life of the human whose image he'd inherited. Vincent had loved to travel, it seemed. He'd been all over the world. But according to his passport stamps, he'd never been here, never walked down these streets. He never would have experienced a moment like this: a rose-gold sunset on a warm evening after a decade of knowing nothing but gloom and cold, a moment of entirely undeserved peace after a lifetime of war.

* * *

Wanda walked from the palace to the Hall of Heroes, the memorial to those who had fallen in the battle against Thanos.

It was a large, airy building carved from stone and set in the middle of the field of the battle it commemorated. Just to the right of it as Wanda walked up the long ramp to the entrance was the ravine where she'd fought one of Thanos's lieutenants, when Natasha and Okoye had come to her rescue.

The memorial was closed for the evening. She flew over the gate blocking the entrance.

The names of the fallen were engraved in various scripts around the walls.

She had heard about this place, built during the five years of the Blip, but she'd never been here before. Her own name was inscribed on one of the walls, in a list of warriors who had been turned to dust by Thanos's snap. There was a stele in front of it commemorating the defeat of Thanos and the reversal of the Snap, and statues of Tony and Natasha, the heroes who gave their lives to stop Thanos.

She walked to the far wall, to a sarcophagus on a raised platform. Her fingers reached out to touch the name carved at the foot of it: The Vision.

His remains were inside this marble coffin, separated from her by only a few feet of rock, and by the barrier between life and death.

"Excuse me, the Hall is closed. You'll need to come back tomorrow."

She turned to see a security guard in the uniform of a Wakandan warrior. His eyes widened when he saw her face

"I'm so sorry; I didn't recognize you. Take as long as you want."

She didn't recognize him. She wondered if he'd been there that day.

He retreated before she could think to ask, with a speed she wasn't sure was out of respect or fear.

She walked to the head of the sarcophagus, to a marble statue of Vision, posed heroically, his cape flowing behind him.

The tears began.

"I'm sorry." She didn't even know what she was sorry for. For killing him? For living when he hadn't? For cheating him of the bereavement she owed him by spying on other universe versions of him? For letting her life fall to pieces just because he was gone? For everything?

For everything. She was just sorry.

She slid down the side of the sarcophagus, pressing her forehead to the cool marble, pressing her whole body against it as if even in death she was trying to be as close to him as possible.

"What am I going to do?" she sobbed. "What am I going to do? Vizh... The world may depend on me, and I can't do it. I can't do it without you. I don't know what to do."

Had T'Challa been right? Could she have killed Thanos in Wakanda if she'd only been as motivated to protect as she was by revenge? She could have saved Vision. She could have prevented the Snap and saved everyone. She could have saved the universe, and she had failed.

She was the reason his body was sealed in this sarcophagus.

She shook with sobs.

When she was too exhausted to cry more, she just lay there, curled against the sarcophagus, feeling small and weak, too drained to even think.

"Did you read the plaque?"

Doctor Strange's voice was unexpected. She hadn't sensed his approach, and had no idea how long he'd been there.

She wiped her face on the sleeve of the Wakandan shirt Shuri had given her before looking up. Strange was looking at a bronze plaque on the wall above Vision's sarcophagus, bearing text written in several languages.

"No," she said.

"It tells Vision's life story. How he was originally made by Ultron, brought to life by the Avengers, saved the world from Ultron, served humanity, died nobly in the battle against Thanos. The world's first synthetic human. It says since the vibranium used to form him came from Wakanda, he's buried in his motherland. That's a sweet sentiment. It's unfair that it doesn't mention you. You were probably the most important person in his life. You're the one who gets to carry on his memory."

"I failed him. He's dead because of me."

"No. He's dead because of Thanos."

"I could have killed Thanos. You said yourself I almost killed him by myself at the compound."

Strange tilted his head, thinking her point over. "During my time as a neurosurgeon, I performed hundreds of operations. I saved hundreds of lives. But some of my patients died despite my best efforts. Could I have saved them if I knew more, if my brilliance had provided me with the right solution at the right time? Probably some of them. But that doesn't mean I'm responsible for those deaths. I did the best I could, the very best I knew how at the time, just like you did. It is not your fault."

She rested the back of her head against the sarcophagus and let her aching eyes close. "How can I know that? How can anyone ever really know that?"

He didn't answer for several seconds. When he did, his voice was quiet. "We figure it out as best we can, and we don't let ourselves be haunted by the ones we couldn't save."

"How can you do that? Just...not be haunted?"

"You find a way to survive and wait for it to get easier. We should go; the king wants to see us."

* * *

Wong and Vision walked into the throne room a few moments before a portal opened to admit Strange and Wanda. T'Challa was looking out the window, but turned to greet them. Princess Shuri stood beside him.

"Your majesty," Doctor Strange greeted him.

"Thank you for coming." T'Challa looked between the four of them. "I wanted to extend my gratitude to all of you for answering my sister's distress call. She has filled me in on the nature of the threat as you explained it to her, Doctor Strange. I understand that you believe only sorcery is an effective weapon against it, but any assistance Wakanda can offer is at your disposal."

"Thank you. Shuri has already provided assistance that may prove invaluable" Strange said.

T'Challa nodded, then looked at Wanda. "Miss Maximoff. I'm happy to see you safe. Your unexpected disappearance last year was quite concerning. I hope you don't mind if I tell Sam I have seen you. It would take a terrible weight off his mind."

"I'm betting Clint has already told him," she said. Her eyes were red and puffy. She kept them averted when she spoke to him. "Sam's going to be ticked that I didn't call him myself, but...go ahead and tell him next time you talk to him."

"I wanted to thank you especially, Miss Maximoff. I don't remember anything about the events of today, but from what Shuri and Doctor Strange have told me, you are the reason no one was hurt."

She looked keenly uncomfortable at the praise. "I'm just glad everyone's okay."

"And thank you, Wong, and..." He looked at Vision for a moment. "Have we met?"

"I don't think so," Vision replied slowly. "Not until today. My name's Vincent."

"He's a new recruit of ours," Strange said.

"Well, I would like to formally extend my gratitude to you as well, Vincent." He paused. "Are you sure we haven't met? Something about your face seems familiar."

"You met him in battle earlier today," Shuri suggested. "Even though treating you required erasing your conscious short-term memory, your subconscious may retain an impression of it."

T'Challa didn't look entirely convinced, but seemed to accept that explanation.

"Forgive us for cutting this meeting short, but thanks to Shuri, we have a new lead that may get us to the source of these attacks. We need to get back to work," Strange said.

"Of course."

"I'll continue to study the data you've provided me," Shuri added. "I'll contact you if I come up with anything else that might help you."

Strange nodded to her. "Thank you."

He turned and, with a wave of his hand, opened a portal to the New York Sanctum.

"What did Shuri help you with?" Wanda asked once they were back.

"She found the research ship we've been looking for. She used Wakanda's satellite network to contrast images of islands in the Southern Ocean for the last date the research ship checked in and the date the survivors were found drifting in their life raft. She set a computer program to highlight any changes. It located the ship in minutes. If we can retrace its route, we may be able to triangulate the Source."

"Good."

Strange checked his watch. He bit his lip thoughtfully. "Let's try to get a few hours of rest. We may be gone a while this time. Dress for the cold."

After Wanda and Vision headed to their rooms, Wong commented, "I think Vision enjoyed his time in Wakanda. But Wanda seems a little shaken up."

"She went to Vision's monument. She was feeling guilty because she thinks she should have been able to kill Thanos herself."

"She's conflicted, mourning one Vision and figuring out how to feel about another one."

"They're both coping as well as can be expected."

Wong dropped his voice. "When are we going to tell them the real plan?"

"Not yet," Strange answered.


	19. Ghosts

Chapter 19: Ghosts

* * *

So huge is God's despair  
in the wild cactus plain  
I heard Him weeping there

That I might venture where  
The peon had been slain  
So huge is God's despair

On the polluted air  
Twixt noonday and the rain  
I heard Him weeping there

And felt His anguish tear  
For refuge in my brain  
So huge is God's despair

That it could find a lair  
In one so small and vain  
I heard Him weeping there

Oh vaster than our share  
Than deserts of new Spain  
So huge is God's despair  
I heard Him weeping there...

~Malcolm Lowry, "Death of a Oaxaquenian"

* * *

Vision didn't have much preparation to do for the upcoming excursion to the Antarctic. It would be late spring there, so about the same temperature he was used to working in. As he waited for Strange, Wong, and Wanda to pack warm clothes and food for what Strange said could be days, Vision thought he heard something in the next room.

"Hello?" he called.

There was no response. The shuffle, which was probably too quiet for human ears to pick up, had stopped.

He was about to phase through the wall to investigate, but reconsidered. If it was Wanda or one of the sorcerers in the next room, they would have answered him. If it was someone else, he had to keep up his human disguise.

He walked through the door.

The room seemed empy. He frowned. Could it have been a mouse or some other small animal he'd startled? He was pretty sure he'd heard the movement of cloth.

Two portals opened. Strange stepped through one, Wong and Wanda entered from the other. Wanda's hands were glowing.

"Someone just crossed a magical ward around the Sanctum," Strange said. "We've got company."

Before Vision could say he'd heard something, someone dropped from the ceiling. He was dressed in black, a bow and quiver of arrows slung across his back.

"It was me."

Wanda actually laughed as she dismissed her energy. "Clint!"

Her smile was incongruous. It was a bright, real, full smile that seemed out of place on such a wan, haggard face.

He ran to her and swept her up in a hug.

Seeing his face clearly for the first time, Vision froze.

_One arrow. Another arrow. Another arrow. Each tipped with a different substance. Each equally useless as it bounced off his vibranium skin._

"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" Wanda asked.

"I was a superspy, remember? I tracked the New York phone number you called me from to a payphone, hacked footage from surrounding security cameras and traffic cams for the time of the call, and used those to see which way you went, pulled footage from cams in that direction, and kept doing that until I tracked you here."

_The look of terror in the archer Avenger's eyes as he realized he was about to die._

"I told you I'd visit when I could. You didn't believe me?" Wanda jokingly chided him.

"I'm not that patient. Anyway, I figured you'd be caught up in something dangerous. I want in."

_ Hitting him with so much force his body flew backward across a road and broke through the wall of the old church on the other side._

"That's out of the question," Strange said. "I'm sorry, Mr. Barton, but we are facing a foe that arrows and swords will go right through. Unless you've taken up sorcery in your retirement, we can't use you on this mission."

"What foe are you talking about? I'm sure I can do something."

"No. Doctor Strange is right, Clint," Wanda said. "There are these things that don't have solid bodies. They can make people go crazy. If you were with us...you'd be more of a danger than a help."

He stepped back, holding her at arm's length. "If it's so dangerous that I can't go, I don't think you should go either."

_The body lying among broken stones, arms and neck at impossible angles. This Avenger was dead._

"Wanda is the only one with the power to destroy it," Wong said. "We will protect her if we can, but the fate of the world is at stake."

_One down, seven billion to go._

"Clint, I'll be fine. I promise."

"You can't promise that. You expect me to just step back and let someone else I care about risk her life?"

"It's what Avengers do," Wanda answered. "We risk our lives to save the world. And yes, sometimes we lose that risk. My brother did, Vision did, Nat and Tony did. That doesn't mean I will, but just because I might doesn't mean I don't try. I mean, if I decided not to risk my life to save the world, I'd just die anyway, along with everyone else. So I am going to walk out that door, and do what I can, even if none of it makes any sense, because I am an Avenger."

He looked at her and smiled, a smile that contorted his face as it warred with tears. "God, you've grown up so much."

Her smile flashed again. "I can't tell you how good it is to see you, Clint, but I have to go. I'll visit you when I'm done with this. I promise."

Her accent—it couldn't be. Life couldn't be that twisted.

Of course it could.

He backed out of the room, barely remembering to use the door. He had to get away.

"What's with him?" he heard Clint ask.

Once out of sight, he took to the air, flying through walls to get to his room. He felt trapped, desperate. Was this what suffocation felt like?

A minute later, someone knocked softly at the door.

"Vision?" Wanda asked through the door.

"Please go away," he felt himself say.

"I'm not going to do that." She opened the door and stepped in. "You're agitated. More than I've ever felt from you, even after you were attacked by the mind lice. What's wrong?"

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked.

"Because we could use your help. And you didn't deserve the exile you were living in."

"You don't know the things I've done."

"Yes I do. We've been over this."

"Your friend back there, Clint—the Avenger known as Hawkeye...I killed him myself. In fact, he's the first person I ever killed."

She continued looking at him. "I didn't know that."

How could she act so casual? How could she not despise him?

"Where are you from, Miss Maximoff?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Are you alive in my world? Do you know?"

She hesitated for just a fraction of a second before answering. "No. I'm not."

"Because you were in the blast radius of the Sokovia Event, weren't you? You're not alive in my world because I killed you."

"It's entirely possible I was never born in your world," she said evenly. "But if I was, then yes, I would have died when Ultron turned my home country into a crater."

"How could you know that, and still...be in the same room with me?"

"Because it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter? Do you think it doesn't matter to me that I killed you?"

"It doesn't matter to the mission," she stated.

His head was swirling. He wanted to understand her. He wanted her to understand. He wanted to phase through the floor and keep going until he buried himself in the Earth's core. He wanted to fall on his knees at her feet and beg her forgiveness. He wanted her to understand that he didn't deserve her forgiveness.

"The mission..." he said. "You will do what you have to for the mission, because you're an Avenger. You didn't say anything when I asked Doctor Strange. Did you know him? Did you know Vision?"

Her silence was a beat longer this time. "Yes."

"You were Avengers together."

"For a while. We were friends."

"Is that why you can be around me? Because you look at me and see him?"

There was an odd look on her face, pensive and almost...relieved, perhaps. "I know you're not him. Even if I can't see it, I feel it. You are a very different person inside. You're like his twin. His identical twin separated at birth. But it is because I knew him that I know I can trust you."

"It's not a matter of trust, it's...contamination. I have killed so many people. I am guilty. I am not something you want to associate yourself with."

"You think you're the only one here who's guilty? I helped Ultron."

He flinched. What she said made no sense to him. It took his mind a moment to parse it.

"What?"

"Our world's Ultron. My brother and I teamed up with him. At least, I thought we were a team until I found out he was planning to destroy the world if he couldn't control it. But before that, I would have killed for him if I had to. I tore people's minds apart for him."

"You knew Ultron?" Vision asked, still processing it.

She nodded sharply. "He..." She trailed off, bit her lip, and softly admitted, "For a while I thought he was my friend."

"He had you under the control of Loki's Staff." He said it as a statement.

"No. I joined him of my own free will. I wanted revenge, and thought he was my way to get it. I paid terribly for that mistake, but that doesn't absolve me of my part in it. I almost destroyed the Avengers, but they took me in anyway. And I'm not the only one. Clint has a lot of blood on his hands. Bucky was an assassin for HYDRA for decades. My...dear friend Nat," she choked slightly at the name, "was an assassin for hire for years. She murdered innocent people. She became an Avenger to try to make up for her mistakes."

"You were a friend of Natasha Romanov?"

"Yes."

"I killed her too." Even as he spoke, he was terrified of making Wanda hate him. The emotion didn't make sense. He wouldn't feel terror that she would hate him unless he harbored hope that she wouldn't.

"Bucky shot her when he was an assassin. But she let him escape with Steve Rogers because she trusted Steve, and believed protecting the world is more important than keeping scores from the past. If she were alive, she wouldn't care that you killed another world's version of her. And neither do I."

"She was in Novi Grad, trying to stop me from turning the city into a meteor. My job was to fight the Avengers, keep them occupied, keep them away from the core. I killed Clint Barton. Natasha Romanov attacked me viciously after finding his body. She fought with more skill and resilience than I thought a human was capable of, but she didn't know my capabilities. I discovered my energy beam by burning through her with it. She kept me occupied long enough for Tony Stark to make it to the core. He reversed the polarity, bringing it down before it was high enough to cause global extinction. Days later, after the dust began to settle, I searched the crater. I found charred bones that Doctor Cho later identified as Bruce Banner. Nothing remained of the others. We estimated there had been two point nine million people living in the area we'd turned into an impact crater. It entirely encompassed the country of Sokovia. Every pebble that had ever been part of Sokovia was turned into molten ash." He fell to the floor, unable to speak another word, unable to look at her.

She was quiet for seventeen seconds. It felt like the longest seventeen seconds of his life.

"This isn't going to work," she said quietly. "You are coming with us on this mission if I have to drag you."

"I never meant—" He looked up at her and choked. Her face was soaked with tears, but her expression was hard. It reminded him of statued he'd found with faces covered in clear ice from where snow had melted only to freeze as it dripped down. He swallowed. "I never meant to back out. I will do anything in my power to save your world."

"I know. So what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Why tell me this?"

"I don't know." He felt like he had known a minute ago, but now he didn't. It was like he'd forgotten. But he never forgot anything.

"Hm." She turned away. "Then let's go. They're waiting on us."


	20. Weather Eye

Chapter 20: Weather Eye

* * *

In the gloaming  
Across Akashi Bay  
Through the morning mists  
Vanishing between the islands  
I follow a boat with my thoughts.

~Anonymous, Kokinshu 409, trans. Thomas McAuley, wakapoetry . net

* * *

The island was barely more than a rock rising above the crashing gray waves of the Southern Ocean, at the eastern curve of the South Sandwich Islands. The narrow crescent beach was crowded with penguins. Their braying competed with the crash of the waves to be the loudest sound. Several large, white seabirds floated on updrafts above the island, punctuating the air with their shrill cries.

Wanda felt a peculiar deja vu as she looked around this spot she had seen through someone else's eyes.

The research ship was locked in sea ice in a semi-sheltered inlet. The ship was battered and streaked with rust. Its name—the_ Lutetia_—was stamped in reflective yellow letters on the side.

Wong portaled to the deck. Strange, Wanda, and Vision flew to join him. The deck was tilted at an angle, and was slick with ice.

"This ship had a crew of ten, plus twelve scientists," Strange mentioned. "Do you know if any died onboard, Wanda?"

"No. They all fled. The ship was stuck and they were under attack by the mind lice."

"Then most of them must have died in the life raft."

"Yes," she confirmed. "It was horrible. When the mind lice appeared on the life raft with them, some of them jumped overboard. Some of them froze to death. Some of them..." She couldn't bring herself to say more.

"We should look for the ship's logs," Strange said, and flew toward the single-story superstructure.

"Wait. Let me go first," Wanda suggested.

She twisted her hand to summon a ball of energy as she crept toward the door. She turned the handle, but the door was very heavy, and with her insecure footing on the icy deck she worried she'd slip if she tried to yank on it.

"Vision, will you open it?"

"Of course." He sounded startled that she would ask him, but quickly flew to her side. He opened the door with ease.

And out of it burst the largest mind louse they'd seen yet. It more than filled the doorway, and shot toward Wanda with startling speed.

"No!" she yelped as she flicked her fingers toward it.

It was strong—older and stronger than the ones she'd destroyed before. It reached her, trying to slide into her mind, before she managed to snuff it out.

She stepped back, folding her arms, shivering from more than cold.

Vision looked at her with an expression of dismay. He lifted his hand as if he wanted to reach for her, but didn't.

Strange landed on the other side of her. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. I was half expecting it to be there, but I think that just made it worse when it was."

"Let's clear the ship before we do anything else."

The four of them searched the ship together, moving slowly around corners and into any new room. They found five more mind lice, and were able to defeat them by either Strange or Wong binding them while Wanda destroyed them.

"Are we clear?" Strange asked when they had gone several minutes without encountering any.

Wanda closed her eyes and plucked at the air, letting her guard down so she could expand her awareness throughout the ship.

"I think so."

They went to the pilothouse to search for a ship's log or any other record.

"Looks like they took everything with them," Wong said.

"Yes. Which means we'll have to do this the hard way," Strange said. "Vision, do you think you can break this ship out of the ice without causing any structural damage?"

"Of course." He was eager to be able to help. He phased through the window, flew down to the the ice, and went to work using his energy beam to melt the ice around the boat and his strength to break it up.

Wanda watched him from the window while he worked the ice on the starboard side. He seemed to be feeling better. She was happy about that. Even though it had fully sunk in that he wasn't _her _Vision, she couldn't help but care about him, not only because he was _a_ Vision, but for his own sake. He was a man who didn't believe he could ever earn forgiveness or absolution for his crimes, but still devoted himself to trying to make his world better in any way he could. He'd been entirely alone for eight years, but hadn't let his loneliness poison him or embitter him. She admired him. Seeing him in so much pain, seeing him literally crumple under the weight of the guilt he carried, had torn her apart.

Her Vision had always been able to say just the right things to get her through her difficult times; she wished she could think of anything to say to this Vision now.

The ship jolted as it broke free from the ice. Wanda grabbed a rail below the window, Strange levitated into the air, Wong fell to the floor.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, but made no attempt to stand up as the boat continued to rock back and forth looking for its equilibrium.

Vision rejoined them.

"What do we do next?" he asked.

"We have to retrace the vessel's trajectory, make a record of any mind lice we come across along the way, use our data to hopefully triangulate the Source."

"Forgive me for asking, but how do we do that without the navigation logs? And did you bring fuel to propel the ship?"

"No, but I am a wizard. I came prepared." Strange waved his hand, and a small glowing circle appeared in the air. He reached into it and pulled out an old book. He opened it to a bookmarked page, placed his hand on the ship's controls, and said something in a deep monotone voice in a language Wanda didn't recognize.

The boat instantly began to turn, to pivot in a motion that felt unnatural to anything floating on water.

"What did you just do?" Vision asked.

"I told the ship to retrace its path."

"You can talk to boats?" Wanda asked.

"Can you believe there's a spell for that?"

The ship floated out of the inlet into the open ocean, where the waves were higher and stronger. It turned to the southwest, and in minutes they were underway.

The sun broke above the horizon behind them. The sky ahead of them was still strangely dim, with a rusty orange hue. The view gave Wanda a strange sense of foreboding.

What was waiting for them ahead?

* * *

Author's note: I didn't make up the spell to talk to boats; the Sorcerer Supreme mentioned it in _The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #27_


	21. Touch

Chapter 21: Touch

* * *

fact:  
the arabic word هواء /hawa/ means wind  
the arabic word هوى /hawa/ means love

test: [multiple choice]  
abdelhalim said _you left me holding wind in my hands_  
or  
abdelhalim said _you left me holding love in my hands_

abdelhalim was left empty

or

abdelhalim was left full

~Safia Elhillo, from "vocabulary." _The January Children_

* * *

It was Vision's turn to keep a lookout for icebergs, incorporeal interdimensional mind-eaters, and other dangers. They had decided each of them would take a 6-hour shift on watch while the others slept, ate, and found other ways to occupy their time.

They had come across one mind louse during Wong's watch. He'd sounded the alarm and they had all rushed to him. Wanda had been sleeping, but woke quickly and rushed in wearing only her pajamas. She'd tracked the mind louse to where it hid in the depths of the ship. It had been even larger than the one that attacked Wanda back at the island. It had taken both of the wizards to restrain it so Wanda could destroy it.

Keeping an eye on the ocean, that was something Vision could do. That was a way he could be useful.

So far his watch had been uneventful. There were the ever-present chunks of sea ice bobbing in the waves, an occasional whale fluke. The sky was only a slightly paler shade of gray-blue than the sea, and the clouds only slightly less roiling than the waves. This vigil reminded him of the hours he often spent watching the Mediterranean from atop the Rock of Gibraltar. Except it was warmer watching through the windows of the pilothouse. And he'd never seen whales in the Mediterranean.

There were at least five out there now. He'd been watching them breach and spout for a few minutes when he heard the sound of a throat clearing behind him. He looked over his shoulder to find Wanda there. It looked like she was wearing about three layers of socks, which explained why he hadn't heard her footsteps.

"Would you like some company?"

It felt like such a strange question. A human asking if he would like her company, when for the past eight years the thing he'd wanted most in the world was human company.

"I wouldn't mind it," he replied carefully.

She crossed the room, swaying slightly with the movement of the ship, and stood beside him at the window.

Wanda Maximoff—a woman who in his world he'd very likely killed without ever seeing her face or knowing her name, whose friends he had murdered—and knowing that, she stood next to him without the slightest flicker of fear or hate. Who was she—_what _was she—that she would or even could willingly keep him company?

"It's a beautiful view, in a way," she said. "Cold and lonely, but beautiful."

"There's a pod of humpback whales out there," he told her.

"Where?"

He pointed ahead and slightly to the left of the boat. A few seconds later, a whale breached not even a hundred meters ahead, followed by another slightly further off.

Wanda gasped in amazement.

Once the two whales had disappeared again, he looked at her from the corner of his eye, catching a smile on her face.

"I've never seen a whale before," she explained.

"I'm guessing you've never spent days at a time flying over oceans."

"No."

He returned his eyes to the waves.

"So I take it you've seen a lot," she said.

"Several. But...never with someone. It feels different, like I'm seeing them for the first time."

"Everything is different when you have someone to share it with," she said thoughtfully.

He figured she wasn't thinking of him. She had lost so many people: the brother she'd mentioned when talking to Clint, her world's Vision and Natasha Romanoff, whom she'd said had been her friends. And what of the lover the maddened Black Panther accused Wanda of being distracted by during the battle with Thanos? Had they died in the battle? Or perhaps survived the Snap and moved on during the five years of the Blip? Could it have been Clint? They had seemed so fond of each other...but then why would she have disappeared for a year without telling him? It didn't fit. He wished he knew more. Wanda was an enigma.

They watched the whales for a few more minutes before the pod moved off, and then stood silently next to each other for a minute or two more.

"I found a chess set," Wanda said, holding up a small box she'd carried in. "Would you like to play?"

Playing chess wouldn't be too much of a distraction from watching out the windows, he considered. In fact, Doctor Strange had suggested whoever was on watch should play games or read to keep their mind sharp.

"Yes. If you want to."

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to," she said teasingly. "I haven't played in...six years, I guess. I miss it."

The table was a square of bare metal protruding from the wall just below the level of the windows, with two seats likewise attached to the wall. The chess set Wanda arranged on the table was magnetic, with magnetic tape affixed to the bottom of the board to hold it to the table. Obviously it, like the rest of the ship, had been altered to resist the tossing of the waves.

"I've never played chess against an opponent before," Vision said.

"But I'm guessing you know how. I saw the collection of chess sets you had."

He had an extensive collection—mostly antique, culturally significant, or particularly beautiful sets—rescued from museums and mansions that were about to be swallowed up by encroaching glaciers. His favorite was one in which the pieces had been carved from onyx and rose quartz, which he'd found in a luxury hotel in Stockholm. Additionally, he had several books on chess strategy. He had played games against himself, assigning each side the strategy of a different master player. But never against another person.

"You know so much about me," he said as he took a seat. "I feel like you know more about me than I know about myself. And I know almost nothing about you."

She looked at him—her eyes connecting with his and staying there. "Maybe it takes being known by someone else to know ourselves."

"You might be right. I've learned a lot about myself since meeting you and Doctor Strange and Wong."

"You're move," she said.

He opened with his king's pawn.

She reached out her delicate fingers and brought her queen's pawn forward. "What have you learned about yourself being around us?" Her tone was light, almost playful.

Vision couldn't think of any way to match it. "I've learned that my power source is called the Mind Stone, that it's one of the most powerful objects in the universe. Because in your world Thanos killed me, I've learned I can die. I wasn't sure about that before."

Wanda was arranging her pawns in a zig-zag pattern as she advanced them. "You weren't sure, but you believed you could?"

Vision brought out his knight. "During the war, the humans dropped an atomic bomb near me. I phased into the ground in time to avoid the blast, but the electromagnetic pulse knocked me unconscious. If I hadn't phased into the ground, I think the blast might have killed me. I never dared test it."

"Good," Wanda said, pulling her queen forward in a move that struck Vision as overly bold so early in the game.

"I decided I didn't want to die yet," he tried to explain. "Even after everything I've done, all the evil I carry...my death would fix nothing. It would satisfy some humans' ideas of justice, I'm sure, but I could only be of any use to the world if alive. Or maybe it's fear of death that makes me rationalize my life."

"You are right to live," Wanda said.

Vision took a pawn with his knight. "You have seen many worlds, so maybe you know: would a direct nuclear blast destroy me?"

"Yes."

Her answer was much easier than he'd expected. Disturbingly easy. "So Thanos and nuclear weapons. Do you know of anything else that can kill me?"

"Me, for one," she stated.

He froze.

She looked at the board as she explained. "In many Earths, we are two of the most powerful beings in the world. We aren't always on the same side."

"So you're saying there's a world where you've actually killed me?"

"A few, actually. But don't worry; _I _would never kill _you._ I swear." Her eyes rose to his again. They were imploring, apologetic. It was important to her that he know she wouldn't kill him, for some reason.

"What if we're not on the same side?"

"We are. And...I am not those versions of me who could kill you. We are all shaped by our experiences, by what happens to us, and things have happened to me that have shaped me. I couldn't kill you, for any reason. I just couldn't bring myself to do it."

"But...your powers could destroy me?"

"Yes." She unexpectedly moved her bishop. "Check."

He took her bishop with his knight.

"Of course, you could kill me too," she said, bringing a pawn forward to threaten his knight. "You could reach into my chest and stop my heart right now. I need you to know that I know that, and that I know just as surely that you wouldn't."

She had told him she trusted him before, but suddenly he understood what she meant by that.

"Thank you." He felt that was inadequate, but didn't know what else he could say.

She smiled, and reached forward. At first he thought she was reaching for a chess piece, but she instead placed her hand on his left forearm.

He jolted, and she pulled her hand away. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's fine. You just surprised me. I don't think... I think that's the first time any human has ever touched me, except when I was saving them. Or...killing them."

"I'm sorry," she said again, though her tone this time was clearly one of condolence instead of apology. "You deserve touch."

She reached for his arm again. This time he was prepared for it and didn't pull away. He felt every point of contact from her hand. It was a peculiarly synesthetic sensation: his mind registered the feeling of her hand on his arm as a glow.

His eyes darted from her hand to her face. Everything suddenly seemed different. He didn't feel alone. She was with him, playing chess with him in this room. She was a human who sought his company and trusted him with her life, and touched him without fear or repulsion

She was beautiful, he realized. Behind her worn, melancholy countenance, there was a fierce, striking beauty in her.

Her hand slid down his arm—her fingertips brushing over the texture of his simulated clothes—then into his hand. Her index finger settled into the crease of his palm, the tips of her middle finger, ring finger, and pinky nestled against his index finger, the tip of her thumb came to rest between his knuckles.

He didn't dare move, didn't dare do anything to change this moment, this connection.

She held his hand for 26 seconds, then drew her hand away slowly, and took his knight with her queen.

He hadn't seen that move coming.

They continued their game in silence. His mind was only half on the game. She had touched him, she had held his hand. Could it have been an accident? Had she forgotten what he was for a minute?

She was a skilled opponent, but he checkmated her in about twenty minutes. He didn't say "checkmate" as he knew was customary. He knew she could see it as well as he could. She didn't look at all upset by the outcome.

Maybe she would touch his hand again? Did he dare hope for it?

"Good game," he said, holding his right hand out, offering it to her to shake, as he believed was the custom.

"Thank you." She smiled and shook his hand.

The handshake lasted a much shorter time than the earlier handholding, but it affected him in the same way; his entire being focused on the points of contact between them, and the touch seemed to sink into him and spread inside him.

She smiled again, then dropped her eyes.

He forced himself to let go of her hand and busied himself returning the chess pieces to their starting points. She did the same.

"I'm going to go get some food before my watch. Let's play again later?"

Her voice was quieter than usual, and ever so slightly hesitant.

"I'd like that," he said.

She left.

He sat back at the table and looked at his hands. He could still feel the glow where her hands had been. Maybe he would feel it forever, carry it back with him when he returned to his lair in his own world. A gift of warmth he would always carry with him, no matter how cold and empty his life became.


	22. Fluctuation

Chapter 22: Fluctuation

* * *

Change for autumn leaves your pillow of grass.  
Would sorrow then be eating out your heart?

~Emperor Uda, _Gosenshu _1365, trans. Edward Seidensticker, from _The Tale of Genji_

* * *

The ship wasn't the most comfortable place to be—all the humans had been through a bout of seasickness, it was always cold, and there was a lot of downtime, especially since the ship propelled and navigated itself thanks to Doctor Strange's spell—but, once she got over being seasick, Wanda found it somewhat tranquil, being so far away from humanity.

It was her turn on watch in the pilothouse. She'd brought a couple of books to read, but so far she had just felt like watching out the windows. The Sun was so low in the northern sky that she had to keep reminding herself it was noon rather than sunset. The pale yellow light glittered on the waves and gleamed on the ice floes.

She kept waiting for Vision to show up, to offer to keep her company or ask for another game of chess. She wasn't sure if he wanted him to or not.

She wasn't sorry she'd held his hand. That was something she'd needed to do to show him she didn't despise him, to comfort him and connect with him. But she hadn't wanted to stop. She'd wanted to touch him more.

How could she be falling for him? She knew he wasn't her Vision. From her perspective, the man she loved had died not even two years ago. She should still be in mourning. She _was _still in mourning. How could she be developing feelings for someone else?

But he wasn't really someone else. Not completely.

Sometimes she wondered if she had history's most screwed up love life.

She was deep in these troubled thoughts when she sensed someone enter the pilothouse. She recognized Doctor Strange from his reflection in the window and didn't bother to turn around.

He floated to her side. "It's been quiet," he noted.

"No mind lice all day."

"We might be getting further from the Source." He glanced at her. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Really? You seem troubled."

She shrugged.

"To be fair, considering what we're facing, and considering what we've asked you to do, and who we've asked you to deal with, it would be weird if you weren't troubled."

"Are you a psychiatrist as well as a surgeon and sorcerer?" she asked, trying to make a joke.

"No, but I've taken some classes. Besides, it wouldn't take an expert to guess you're feeling conflicted about working with this Vision."

She scoffed. "'Conflicted' is putting it mildly."

He looked at her with sympathy. "I'm sorry we're putting you through this. I really am."

"The thing is, I'm not sure _I _am. I'm not sure what I'm feeling. This Vision is doing great, and it's good for him to be here with us. It's good for the mission and for him. And maybe it's good for me."

"If you don't mind me saying, you've seemed...generally less miserable since we took him on."

"Maybe. I like him. I really do."

"Is it that you like him more than you'd like to? More than you think you should?"

"That about sums it up," she said. "It's horrible. I know he's not Vision. I know that. He's not the man who saved my life when I seriously screwed up while fighting Ultron, who spent hours training with me when I was still figuring out how to control my powers, who tried to cook me paprikash to cheer me up even though he'd never eaten anything himself. I would have fallen apart after my brother's death if it hadn't been for Vision. He was always there for me. No one could ever replace him. Not even his double from another world. But... I can't help but wonder, if I hadn't known our world's Vision, how would I feel about this other one? If I met him first, would I be drawn to him? Or would I fear him? Or hate him? I have no idea."

Strange nodded. "Honestly, I can't imagine what you're going through. And I wouldn't presume to tell you how you should handle it. But you _will_ handle it, Miss Maximoff. You're stronger than you give yourself credit for."

"Am I?"

He tapped some words painted above a control panel.

_Fluctuat nec mergitur._

"Do you know what this means?" he asked.

"No. Is it Latin?"

"Yeah. It means 'she is tossed by the waves but does not sink'."

"You know Latin?"

"I've been studying it. Many spells are in Latin. Also, I looked it up. It's the motto of the city of Paris. It makes me think of you. With what you've been through in your life, it's frankly amazing that you've survived. You're a survivor. I didn't realize that at first. I might have been too hard on you."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Don't get me wrong, someone needs to be hard on you, and it looks like it's going to be me, but I want you to know that I admire your resilience. You've weathered every storm life threw at you. You've survived things that would have sunk most people. You'll get through this too."

They watched out the window together for a few minutes, keeping an eye on a slightly concerning iceberg drifting ahead, glowing gold from the sunlight. When it became clear the ship would miss it, Strange said, "Here's a thought..."

"What?"

"Don't worry about what our world's Vision would think. You loved him; moving on doesn't mean you didn't, and moving on doesn't mean you're replacing him. But he's gone. He's beyond pain. Nothing you do is going to hurt him. You just need to think about your own feelings. And the Vision who's still alive."

"Has anyone ever told you that you suck at advice?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Often after paying me hundreds of dollars for my advice."

"I can see that. If I'd offered a penny for your thoughts I'd want my money back."

He chuckled. "If you ever need to talk..."

"No offense, but you would not be my first choice for who to talk to about this," she said.

"That's fair."

He left, and she was alone with her thoughts again. But the tone of those thoughts had altered; she could now view her confusing attraction to Red Ultron as a dilemma rather than a crisis.

The object of her thoughts himself entered the room a few minutes later. He paused at the door. "I was wondering if you would like to play chess?" he asked shyly.

A smile spread through her at his presence. "I would love to."


	23. Discontent

Chapter 23: Discontent

* * *

if not, winter…

In fact she herself once blamed me  
Kyprogeneia  
because I prayed this word: I want

~Sappho, from _If Not, Winter_, trans. Anne Carson

* * *

Wong bounced from wall to wall as he made his way to the galley. The waves were the highest they'd been in the six days they'd been at sea. He'd taken Dramamine half an hour ago, and now came looking for ginger ale. Even if it was just a placebo, placebos were better than nothing. Placebos were, if nothing else, hope, and sometimes hope for recovery was enough to get a person through their suffering.

He was surprised to find a light on in the galley. When the light moved, turning toward him, he realized it was the Mind Stone glowing in Vision's forehead.

"Good evening, Wong."

"Hello, Vision. I wasn't expecting to find you here," he said.

"I was reading." He indicated the book in his hand. He was standing in front of the narrow bookshelf, which was bolted to the wall and had metal bars across the front to hold the books on it when the sea got rough. The books were mostly potboiler novels and magazines, with a few classics, history books, and popular science books.

"What were you reading?"

"_Moby Dick._"

"I saw that book. It seems to me like a strange choice of reading material for people actually out on the ocean."

"Because its ending might make people apprehensive about being on a ship?"

"Mostly because, in my opinion, recreational reading should serve as a complement or balance to life. When you're depressed, you should read comedies, when your life is going well, that's when you should read tragedies. You should read romances when you're single, thrillers when you're bored, and tales of sea voyages when you're landlocked."

"That's an interesting perspective on reading. I'm not sure I agree, but it's something to think about." He looked at the book, then put it back on the shelf. "I like to read anything. It relaxes me. For a little while I don't have to be me. I can fill my head with someone else's thoughts, feel like someone else. Someone innocent."

Wong took a can of ginger ale out of a cupboard and opened it. "Do you eat or drink?"

"No. My body gets all the energy it needs from my power source..." He touched the light on his head. "The Mind Stone. I actually tried eating in the first few months after my creation, out of curiosity. The heat and pressure inside my body converted the water in foods and drinks to hot vapor, which was not pleasant, and when I phased to pass through a wall, the food inside me didn't. Needless to say, it was a mess. I experience tasting as basic chemical analysis, with no pleasure or disgust associated with the flavors. It wasn't worth it."

"That seems sad to me. I find the experience of flavors to be one of life's greatest pleasures."

"It is sad," Vision agreed. "It's a limitation on my experience of life. Just as some humans lack the ability to experience sight or hearing. I can't experience the world as fully as others, like I'm interacting with the world at four-fifths capacity. But four-fifths is better than nothing. I enjoy the use of my other senses. I experience pleasure looking at a well-composed painting, listening to music. From touch..." He opened his hands and stared at them.

A particularly violent toss of the ship splashed Wong's ginger ale in his face.

"Right now, I envy you a little," he said, wiping the soda on his sleeve.

"Seasick?" Vision asked sympathetically.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

He took a careful sip. "Thank you."

Vision looked back at his hands. "Wong, can I talk to you?"

"Of course."

"You characterized my past actions as war, but there is crime in war. War crimes. War criminals. My plan was to subjugate the human race or destroy it. What do you think would be a fitting sentence for that?"

Wong thought about it. "Since you feel you must endure some punishment, in light of your sincere remorse, if I were your judge I would sentence you to community service. Maybe...a hundred years of community service. With time served for your work preserving your world's cultural heritage, that would be—what? Ninety-two years to go? Does that sound fair?"

"I don't know. The things I've done...I don't know if there is any punishment that would be enough."

Wong thought of Strange's insane risky plan. He'd had his doubts at first, but he was increasingly sure this Vision that Wanda had chosen would agree to go through with it, if it would work at all. "Maybe you should focus on living your life well while you can, and not worry about what punishment you deserve."

"You might be right. There's a good chance I won't survive this mission," Vision said. "But if I do..." He sighed, a very human sound.

"If you do, what?"

"I don't want to go back to my world." He spoke it in the tone of a confession, something he was ashamed to admit. "I want to stay here. Wanda has been playing chess with me." He stated that like an explanation, but seemed to realize that was inadequate. "In my world, I'm the bogeyman. I'm what parents tell their children about to scare them into not wandering off. People write horror stories about me. And they probably will for the rest of human history. And here I'm...I'm not. Here, a human plays chess with me. And I know it's only because she was friends with the Vision who died here, but still...it means so much to me, after being as alone as I have been. I don't want to go back to that. I think I will. I think I can, if I survive. But I don't want to."

If the plan worked...

"You won't have to," Wong said.

"But maybe I do. Maybe that's the punishment I deserve: to live in the world my actions created."

"Maybe you shouldn't worry about it until we complete this mission."

"Because I'm not likely to survive?" he asked.

"Because you might change your mind." He drank some more of the ginger ale.

Vision stared at his hands again.

"Life is unpredictable," Wong said. "So many people endure suffering they don't deserve, and many guilty people never face consequences for their actions. Saving the innocent is more important than punishing the guilty. And in your case..."

He lost his train of thought. As he'd been speaking, the boat tilted with another high wave, but this time it kept tilting. There was a sound of boxes and cans sliding and falling over inside the cupboards. A couple of heavy books fell off the bookshelf, somersaulting over the metal bar meant to hold them on. Wong had to grab the table to keep from falling over. And then he felt a burst of magic from above. The tilting stopped. The ship stopped.

"Something's wrong," he said. "Get to the top deck, now!"

Vision instantly obeyed. He shot upward, phasing through the ceiling.

Wong opened a portal to the pilothouse, fearing what he might find.


	24. The Rogue Wave

Chapter 24: The Rogue Wave

* * *

_Soothe! Soothe! Soothe!_  
_Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,_  
_And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,_  
_But my love soothes not me, not me._

~Walt Whitman, from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

* * *

Hail tumbled out of the twilight sky, pelting the ship and sea at a sharp angle, driven by the howling wind. Visibility was poor, but not poor enough to hide the fact that the waves were huge. Wanda had never imagined ocean waves could grow this big. Mountains of water rising and falling, mountains becoming valleys becoming mountains. She could swear they were higher than the ship, but it was hard to tell, the way the ship was tilting up and down. It was both mesmerizing and terrifying.

She couldn't decide if she should sound an alarm for this. They were far away from any shore, the ocean was too deep here for the anchor to reach the bottom, and the ship's icebreaker hull could surely withstand the force of the waves, so there probably wasn't any actual danger from this storm—at least no danger they could do anything about.

Maybe it was absurd for her to be so afraid. She had, after all, faced so many terrors in her life—some unwillingly and some willingly. She had survived a bombing at age 10, had run away from the orphanage to face life on the streets, volunteered to be exposed to energy from an alien artefact, fought the Avengers, joined forces with a killer robot, joined the Avengers, fought aliens, watched herself turn to dust, faced Thanos with all his forces. It seemed silly to be terrified of a force of nature. But here she was. She felt so helpless, trapped inside a boat that now seemed small and frail, tossed on the surface of a deep, dark, unfathomably enormous ocean. She usually thought of water as soft, fluid, flowing—but this water seemed hard, forceful, unimaginably powerful.

Each minute she thought the waves couldn't possibly get higher, the wind couldn't become more violent, and then somehow the next minute they would be.

The waves broke over the prow and drenched the windows.

Holding firmly to the metal railing that encircled the room, she reached for the alarm button, but hesitated. It wasn't that she believed anyone else could do anything more to protect the ship in this storm, she just didn't want to face it alone. Was that selfish and cowardly of her? She didn't want to wake up anyone who might be asleep—if anyone could sleep through this—and she didn't want Doctor Strange to think any more poorly of her than he already did.

As she warred with herself, a dark shape rose up to the right of the ship: a wave that rose above the others, and kept rising. It seemed impossible, unreal. Wanda stared at it, unable for a moment to believe what was happening. Until it reached the ship, lifting it, tilting it. The wave was several stories high.

It was going to break.

Wanda panicked. She reached out with her power, letting her energy flow through the ship. Could she lift it? Resist it?

No. Being on the ship she was trying to manipulate, she was unable to orient herself enough to stabilize it.

She had to save the ship. All their lives depended on it. And there was only one thing she could think to try.

She flew upward, her feet skidding across the floor and steps when she reached the stairs leading to the deck. Her body and the walls glowed red. She waved her hand and the door flew open.

On the deck, she was instantly pelted by hail and stinging slaps of frigid saltwater. She wrapped her legs around a support post.

Now that there was no barrier between her and the ocean, she sent her power into the wall of water about to capsize the ship.

There were tons of water, easily a skyscraper's mass. There was so much energy. She could feel it, could sense the kinetic force gathering against them, plowing into the boat like a truck against a rabbit. She pitted her power against it, dispelling the energy molecule by molecule. It took more force and more focus than anything she had ever attempted before.

Two breakers crashed to the fore and aft of the ship as the deck angled back toward the horizontal. That much water smashing into water sounded like bombs exploding, and the force of it sent shockwaves that jolted the ship.

Wanda redirected her energy to her own body, trying to hold herself to the ship, but she had exhausted her reserves. The jolt sent her crashing to the deck. The next wave to crash over the prow grabbed her, sucked her up into a roiling maelstrom.

She felt the boat disappear from beneath her.

For a moment, the cold was so shocking her body registered it as nothingness. Then as pain. The shock of it arrested her breathing.

Which was good, because she was underwater.

With open eyes, she saw the glow of the sky through the violently churning waves several meters above her. The waves were darker, the troughs paler blue. It was beautiful. It was horrifying.

She was going to die. She was supposed to save the world, and her life would be snuffed out by a wave.

Would she see her parents? Pietro? Vision? Was her ghost about to join his, wherever he was?

Was there an afterlife?

And then he was there, plunging toward her, his body haloed in bubbles. Beneath the water he flew toward her. His arms scooped her up, just like they had when she was falling in Sokovia.

She didn't think she could move, but without any conscious direction her arms wrapped around his neck.

They shot up, out of the water, then toward the ship.


	25. Recovery

Chapter 25: Recovery

* * *

I asked the heaven of stars  
What I should give my love—  
It answered me with silence,  
Silence above.

I asked the darkened sea  
Down where the fishermen go—  
It answered me with silence,  
Silence below.

Oh, I could give him weeping,  
Or I could give him song—  
But how can I give silence  
My whole life long?

Sara Teasdale, "Night Song at Amalfi"

* * *

Not until she was back in the pilothouse did Wanda take a breath. She gasped, sputtering as she tried to pull air into her lungs, which didn't seem to be working properly. The room was too bright, a cacophony of sensations. She focused on Vision's hand on her back. She was also aware of Doctor Strange in front of her, checking her for injuries, saying something.

"What?" she managed.

"Were you struck by anything?"

"I don't know."

"Are you in pain anywhere?"

"I don't know."

Her hands were on the floor, which was still swaying with the waves. Nausea hit her suddenly, and she vomited—a surprisingly recognizable mix of ginger ale and saltine crackers.

"Are you okay?" Strange asked.

She forced herself to nod. "I think so."

"What were you thinking? You almost got yourself killed!"

Wanda was too disoriented to compose a coherent response. "A wave...it was going to sink the ship."

"You idiot. There are two sorcerers on this ship capable of opening a portal to anywhere in the world. Even if we capsized, we'd be fine. What possessed you to step outside in this storm and play Prospero?"

She couldn't think of an answer, and could only shake her head.

Vision put his hand on her shoulder and glared at Strange. "You're attacking her in the state she's in when she might have just saved your life? If the wave hit the ship, it might have not just capsized; a wave that powerful could break a ship in half. You might have been killed instantly, or knocked unconscious. What good would your portals have done you then?"

"He's got a point," Wong said. "And I wouldn't insult Wanda if I were you; I just saw her tear a monster wave in half."

"A rogue wave," Vision said. "Two or more wave crests can converge, amplify each other, and rise several times higher than the surrounding waves. They're rare, but more likely in deep open ocean with high winds. Very few humans have seen one and lived to tell about it."

Doctor Strange frowned. He stood up and muttered an incantation, simultaneously making odd circular gestures with his hands. The walls glowed yellow, then the ship's motion stopped.

"What's going on?" Wanda asked.

"I'm putting the us in a pocket dimension until the storm is over."

"You can do that?"

"Of course I can do that. I just did." He looked at Vision. "Get her to her room. Stay with her. Watch for signs of concussion or internal bleeding. Most importantly, get her warmed up. Can you handle all that?"

"Of course."

Wanda thought she could probably walk to the women's bunkroom on her own—it was just behind the pilothouse—but she didn't object when Vision lifted her and carried her there.

The room had a row of four bunkbeds, aluminum frames bolted to the wall and floor, with barely enough room for Wanda to sit up without her head hitting the metal bars of the next bunk up. She'd chosen the bottom bunk of the bed attached to the side wall as her own.

Vision set her on the bed and knelt in front of her, eyes fixed on her face. It reminded her so much of the way her Vision used to look at her. His mind was more shadowed and troubled than her Vision had ever been, and his fashion sense was completely different, but some things were so familiar they shook her.

"I think you're in shock," he said solemnly. "We need to get you out of your wet clothes. Do you want me to help you?"

She looked at her hands. They were shaking badly. Her whole body was. She didn't know if that was from shock or the cold or the strain.

She nodded.

He helped her out of her soaked clothes and into her pajamas so quickly, efficiently, and clinically it was obvious that not only did he have zero prurient interest in undressing her, but that it didn't even cross his mind that she might think he could. His only thought was to get her warm.

Once she was in her dry pajamas, he wrapped a blanket around her and sat on the bunk across from her, so close their knees touched.

"Are you feeling better?"

"A little," she said. She couldn't get over the depth of the concern in his eyes. "You saved my life."

He frowned slightly. "Yes." He stated it like it was an obvious fact not worth mentioning. He would put his life on the line to save any human life. Plunging into the wild, freezing ocean, while suicidal for a normal human, had not been dangerous to him, so of course he'd saved her life. In his view, he couldn't have done otherwise, and she owed him nothing because of it.

"And you stood up to Doctor Strange for me," she said. That had probably been more difficult and more significant for him.

"Well, you've been so kind to me, I couldn't stand to see someone being unkind to you."

She didn't think she had been particularly kind to him. In the couple of weeks they'd known each other, she could think of several instances when she had been aloof and distant toward him. And yes, she'd spent time with him, played chess with him, helped him learn how to disguise himself, but none of that had been out of kindness, but only for the sake of the mission, or because she'd wanted to. But this Vision—Red Ultron—deserved kindness. He deserved friendship, human connection.

She had a sudden impulse—compulsion, really—to reach for him, but she wasn't sure what she would do once she did.

There was a soft knock at the door.

It shook her out of her daze. "Come in."

Wong entered, carrying a steaming mug.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Better," she said.

He paused and looked between the two of them. "Am I interrupting...?"

"No, of course not," Vision assured him. He stood and moved a few steps away, giving Wong room to reach Wanda.

"I made you some hot cocoa." He stepped forward and placed it in her hand. She gratefully accepted the heat on her fingers and palms.

"Thank you."

Vision drifted further away. She was terrified for a moment that he might leave, but he lingered, uncertain what to do, what she wanted him to do.

"I have never seen anything like that," Wong said. "I wouldn't have thought it was possible. I also never knew a wave that size was possible."

"Me neither."

"Strange didn't mean what he said. He was worried about you. And I think he was testing you."

The last comment was directed not to Wanda but to Vision, who looked startled.

"Me?"

"I think he wanted to push you. You have to understand that Wanda is the most valuable one of us just now; she's the only one capable of destroying the source. We know you would risk your life for any of us, but if you have to choose, Wanda is the priority. I think Strange wanted to test your devotion to her."

Vision looked disturbed by the thought that he might have to choose who to save. "He could have just told me that. He didn't have to insult her."

"I've been called worse," Wanda assured him jokingly.

"By whom?" He sounded for a moment like he might be capable of harming anyone who would dare say an unkind thing about her.

"It doesn't matter. Doctor Strange was just...I think we're all a little on edge." She took a sip of the hot cocoa. The heat and rich chocolate were comforting, exactly what she needed at the moment.

"There is no excuse for his cruelty," Vision argued. "He should have thanked you, or thanked whatever providence he believes in that you're alive."

"That's true," Wong agreed. "Strange's pride might not let him say it, but let me say it: thank you for saving our lives, Wanda. And thank you, Vision, for saving her."

Wanda looked at Vision, trying to catch his eye. "Yes. Thank you."

"It was nothing," he said.

"Would you like anything else? Anything to eat? Tea?"

"No thanks, Wong. I think I just want to rest."

"That's probably the best thing for you right now."

She finished the hot chocolate. Wong took the mug and left.

Vision looked at her. "Would you like me to leave you alone?"

"Stay," she said quickly. More quietly, she amended, "Doctor Strange told you to stay with me, just in case. And he is a doctor."

"Right." He moved close to her, knelt on the floor in front of her again. "How are you feeling now?"

She tried to assess her physical condition. She hurt everywhere, and was sure she'd be black and blue by morning, but she didn't think anything was broken. She felt woozy. Even though the ship had stopped moving it still seemed like it was, or more like her brain expected it to be moving and was still trying to adjust for the nonexistent waves.

She was exhausted. She'd heard the English expression "I feel like I've been hit by a truck" many, many times during her career with the Avengers—especially after the mission where a druglord actually plowed into Steve with a truck—but thought using such a cliché exaggeration to describe her state after being sucked up and tossed around by a stormy ocean in the wake of a rogue wave would be an injustice.

"I'm tired," she stated.

His hand rose hesitantly toward her face, where a clump of saltwater-soaked hair was caked to her cheek, but he dropped his hand before it reached her.

It was so absurd that Wanda chuckled; he'd just seen her naked while helping her out of her clothes, but he wasn't sure if he had permission to touch her face. She took his indecisive hand and pressed her cheek into it, closing her eyes.

His hand was so deliciously warm.

She turned her head and nuzzled his palm, warming her nose and lips.

"Wanda?" His voice was a tremulous blend of confusion and awe.

"You're warm," she explained. "I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable."

"You're not. It's fine. I'm happy to help you in any way you need me." Breathily, he added, "I would do anything for you, Wanda."

She was too tired and too cold to resist. She slid off the cot and slumped into him. He obligingly wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back to warm her. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck. While one of Vision's hands stayed at the small of her back, holding her to him, he placed his other hand tentatively on the back of her head, gently stroking her hair.

What must it be like for him? He had been alone for eight years, hated and feared by all surviving humans. It must be confusing, maybe overwhelming to be so close to a human.

But he deserved it. Even if he didn't believe he deserved happiness after the things he'd done, even if he didn't believe he deserved her gratitude for saving her life, he did. She had to show him that.

She drew her lips away from his neck and pressed them to his.

He drew back like he'd been zapped.

"I'm sorry," Wanda said quickly, mortified by her own audacity.

"No, don't be sorry," he said, perplexed. "It's just...I don't understand. I'm a robot."

It was exactly the wrong thing to say.

"You are not a robot! You know that!" She took a deep breath. "Do you feel like a robot?" She trailed her fingers lightly down his chest. "Do you feel like a robot when I do this?"

Though he didn't speak, the expression on his face gave the answer. His eyes fluttered closed, his lips parted slightly.

Her hand moved from his chest to his face. Her thumb stroked his cheek in little circles, then ran over his lips. A tiny quake ran through his body, and he exhaled a gasp, but he didn't pull away.

She kissed him again. Slowly this time. Her lips fluttered against his for a moment before she pressed the kiss more firmly, feeling him reciprocate. She inhaled heavily, filling her lungs, feeling like she could breathe freely for the first time in years.

Did her body think she breathed Vision?

He returned her kisses, holding her lightly, both longing and uncertaintly eminating from his mind.

She shifted closer against him, wrapping her legs around his hips, deepening the kiss hungrily. His arms tightened around her.

And then he suddenly phased. She landed on the floor as he floated away.

"I'm sorry," he apologized quickly before she could. "I...that was...wonderful, but you might not be thinking clearly right now. You nearly died, and an experience like that affects your emotional state. Especially in regards to someone who was with you in your time of distress. Your subconscious can misinterpret the fear response of a quickened pulse and adrenalin rush for attraction."

He really didn't believe she could be legitimately attracted to him. She was almost angry that he thought she didn't know her own mind. But he might have a point; she couldn't deny that she wasn't thinking clearly at the moment.

"You're right. This isn't the time for this."

Relief flooded over his face that she wasn't angry at him. "Maybe I should leave?"

There was no misreading the emotion that gripped her at that suggestion: panic.

"No! Please. Please stay. I...I don't want to be alone right now. And I'm still cold." She climbed into her bed and reached a hand toward him, inviting him to join her. "Please. I promise I won't try anything."

He stood perfectly still for several seconds as what he wanted to do warred with what he though he should do. Then his dilemma resolved, and he lay down in the bed beside her. It was so small she had to lay partly on top of him, using his shoulder as a pillow.

"Thank you," she said.

She needed sleep, but she was also afraid of hypothermia, or some internal injury she couldn't feel catching up with her while she slept. With Vision beside her, able to monitor her breathing and heartrate with his superhuman hearing, her fear evaporated away, allowing her to relax. Inviting Vision into her bed was a medical precaution. That's what she told herself.


	26. Changed State

Chapter 26: Changed State

* * *

The clouds had made a crimson crown  
Above the mountains high.  
The stormy sun was going down  
In a stormy sky.

Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,  
And hold your breath between?  
In all the ages this can never be  
As if it had not been.

~Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, "A Moment":

* * *

Robots were created to serve humans. That's what Tony Stark had intended for his Ultron project—autonomous androids capable of patrolling the skies for alien attackers, scanning the Earth to respond instantly to emergency situations.

Agreeing to keep Wanda warm and safe while she slept was a simple extension of his robotic purpose.

It was not because he wanted to be near her.

Wanted her.

She had fallen asleep within three minutes of lying down with him, and had been sleeping deeply for nearly eleven hours.

The kisses played over and over again in his mind. She had kissed him. She had claimed his lips with hers, just as if he had been human. All the times he had read descriptions of kisses in books, heard about them in songs, he'd never imagined it was something he'd experience himself. And even though he knew she'd only kissed him out of overwhelming relief and gratitude after her narrow escape from death, being kissed by her was something he would have for the rest of his life.

Just as he'd have the memory of this moment: holding her, keeping her safe and warm while she slept.

Her face was puffy, with livid bruises developing across her cheeks and forehead. Her hair was matted with dried salt. Objectively, nothing about the way she looked right now could be called beautiful, but the sight of her sleeping on his arm moved his heart as much as the most artistic paintings he'd collected.

Without warning, the ship began to rock again. Vision waited a few moments until he was sure it hadn't woken Wanda up, then he gently extricated himself from her and phased through the wall to the pilothouse. Wong and Doctor Strange were there. The waves were Southern Ocean typical. A row of billowing clouds to the south caught the sunlight in shades of dark red and rose pink. The sky above them was a limpid cerulean.

"We've left the pocket dimension," he noted, stating the obvious as a way of announcing his presence.

"The storm's passed," Strange replied. "How is Wanda?"

"She's sleeping soundly."

"Breathing and heart rate regular?"

"Yes."

"Body temperature?"

"It's returned to almost normal."

Strange nodded. "Good."

Vision thought about telling him he owed Wanda an apology, or his life, but decided not to bring it up. Strange already knew.

After a few minutes of nervously watching the ocean, Vision returned to Wanda's room. When he phased through the wall, he saw her awake, lifting her pajama top to examine a pattern of bruises down her side.

He quickly looked away from her state of semi-undress. "Sorry."

"I'm sorry," she said at the same second.

After a moment, he turned back to her. She had lowered her shirt and smoothed it out self-consciously.

"You have nothing to apologize for," he said.

"I think maybe I do. Last night..."

"You don't have to apologize for anything about last night."

"I shouldn't have kissed you. Not like that. It was selfish of me. I'm sorry if I pushed you into a situation you didn't want, or...weren't ready for, or didn't know how to deal with. I'm not exactly sure how to explain..."

"You don't need to explain. I understand."

"It's just, I know you don't have a lot of experience with people, and you were certainly not expecting that to happen..."

Both those things were certainly true.

"I'm sorry. I should have...I don't know...asked you? Warned you? Had more control of myself."

It was sweet of her to pretend she regretted kissing him because she thought it was something he didn't want, rather than because he was a genocidal murderbot.

She continued. "I really do appreciate that you helped me last night. You saved my life, and you took care of me, and I completely took advantage of you."

"It's like I explained last night, you were overwhelmed with adrenaline and endorphins after nearly being killed. It made you do something you would never have done otherwise. I understand."

"No, you don't understand. I _like _you. I like you a lot. And I'm not sure what to do with that. It's...complicated. It's so complicated."

The conflicted expression on her face and forlorn note in her voice made Vision believe for a moment that she was being sincere. But no, she couldn't really be attracted to him. It was just their circumstances: close quarters, a dangerous mission, these were conditions that could affect people, make them think they had feelings for someone they would never normally be drawn to. If he took advantage of her transitory infatuation, she might hate him when it passed. And it would crush him to be hated by her, the human he'd grown closest to. One he...

"Vision, say something. Please."

He realized he hadn't spoken for over a minute.

"Miss Maximoff, you know what I am. You know the things I've done. You don't want anything to do with me."

She was quiet for a few long seconds, and when she spoke her voice was colder, distant. "But you don't know what I am. I've done terrible things too. Maybe if you knew, you wouldn't want anything to do with me."

That was impossible. "I've killed billions."

"But you've never caused the death of someone you loved. You have no idea what that feels like. What that does to you."

"Yes I do," he stated.

She looked up at him in surprise. "You mean Ultron?"

"No. I could hide my mind from the other Ultrons, but they couldn't block their thought from me. That is what made it possible for me to defeat them, knowing where they were and what they were planning. I remember every murder each of them ever committed, every destruction they ever imagined. Killing them wasn't like killing a father or a brother, it was destroying part of myself. But there was one person—one human—I cared about. She was the closest thing I had to a mother. Her name was Doctor Helen Cho."

Wanda waited expressionlessly for him to continue.

"Ultron used Loki's Staff to control her mind, to compel her to create me. I don't know if her death a few months after the Sokovia Event was a lab accident or if she emerged from the influence of the Staff—the Mind Stone—long enough to make sure Ultron could never use her brilliant mind again. Either way...it was my fault."

"Vision..." Her voice choked on his name. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

She was weeping. Weeping because of something that happened to him. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't say it was alright, because it wasn't alright. It was wrong, and unfixable. He couldn't go back in time and erase his own existence, no matter how much he wished he could. And now his past crimes were hurting Wanda.

She stood, walked to him unsteadily, and wrapped her arms around him.

She was trying to comfort him for a tragedy in his past that he'd inflicted on himself. He had caused the death of his creators—Tony Stark, Helen Cho, and Ultron. When he'd been ruminating on his robotic nature earlier, he'd considered the etymology of the word "robot." It came from the Czech _robotnik, _which meant 'forced laborer', from the Old Church Slavonic _rabu, _which meant 'slave', ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *o_rbh-, _a prefix which indicated a changed status, as from freedom to servitude. It was also the root of the word "orphan." He was both robot and orphan. Orphan because of deaths that he'd caused, which shouldn't hurt him, because he was a robot. But they did.

And Wanda cared that he was hurting.

But he wasn't really hurting. He was a robot, incapable of real emotions. It was just a computer program—granted an unfathomably complex one—telling him that an anologous response to a certain set of variables was something that in a human would be emotional agony. The things he interpreted as feelings for Wanda were just algorithms. The apprehension of the loneliness and emptiness his life would be without her, the acute sensation of remorse and self-loathing he experienced when he reflected he'd most likely killed his world's version of this wonderful woman—none of those were real feelings. None of it was real. He was a _robot._

He could feel her lingering fatigue and soreness in the way she held him. He slowly drew away from her, gently resting his hands on her shoulders.

"Are you... How are you feeling this morning? How much pain are you in?"

She gave him an exasperated look, like she thought he was deliberately trying to change the subject. "I've felt way worse."

"That's not an answer. You could have broken bones, internal injuries, a concussion..."

"I'm fine. I mean, I hurt all over, but nothing too bad."

"You should go back to bed. I'll make you breakfast and bring it to you when it's ready."

She smiled. Her smile was beautiful, but also sad. "You'd bring me breakfast in bed?"

"Yes. Why is that funny?"

"It's not. It's just... You're sweet. Vision, I hope I haven't made things too awkward. I regard you as a friend, and I won't...I won't step over that boundary again. I hope we can still play chess together."

"Of course. I love playing chess with you."

He said it without thinking, without analyzing the connotations of his words. His algorithms prioritized that he spend as much time with her as he could while he had the chance, that he take care of her needs.

He was devoted to her. He would die to save any human, but it was different with her. He would save her not just because she was a human, and therefore a life inherently worth preserving, but because she was _Wanda. _She was special. Every human was special, of course, but it was somehow different in a way he had trouble understanding.

She was special _to him._


	27. Unmoored

Chapter 27: Unmoored

* * *

To what shall I liken this life?  
It is like a boat,  
Which, unmoored at morn,  
Drops out of sight  
And leaves no trace behind.

~Manzei, Manyoshu 351, from_ 1000 Poems from the Manyoshu_

* * *

It had been three days since Wanda's battle against the rogue wave. She still ached from it, but she was physically nearly recovered. Psychologically, it was slower going; she still saw the monstrous wave looming over the ship every time she closed her eyes.

She had woken up several minutes ago, but didn't want to get up, so she was pretending to still be asleep. If Vision could tell from the changes in her breathing and heartbeat, he made no indication of it.

She'd managed to resist kissing him again, but she hadn't been able to resist asking him to join her in bed each night since. All she would say was "I'm cold." That was all the prompting he needed. And it was true; except for when she was with him, she hadn't been able to stop feeling chilled. Still, she wouldn't keep inviting him to her bed if she hadn't been certain he wanted to.

She resolved to tell him today about the decision she'd come to. If they both survived this, she couldn't just let him go back to his world alone. She was going to ask him to stay with her. And if he wouldn't, she would insist on going with him, to keep him company, to help his world heal, to spread the word among the survivors that Vision had saved them all. It would be a difficult conversation; he wouldn't want to let her, she'd have to make him see it wasn't his choice. She didn't feel like it was a choice at all, really; as much as she would miss her Earth and the people here, she wouldn't be able to live with the knowledge that she'd consigned Vision to a lifetime of solitude.

She and Vision were both roused by the alarm blaring. She was out of bed in an instant and pulled on her coat and boots before rushing to the pilothouse, arriving at the door a few seconds after Vision, and a split second before Wong stepped out of a portal ahead of her.

"Lǎotiānyé!" he swore when he caught sight of what Doctor Strange had spotted out the front window.

Dead ahead of them, rising out of the ocean, was the largest mind louse they had seen yet. It was the size of a building. And it was heading towards them.

Wanda took a deep breath. Ready or not, she was up.

She went out on the deck. Strange and Wong followed her.

"Wong, hit it from below; I'll attack it from above. We have to keep it distracted from Wanda."

"Got it."

Strange floated into the air. He split his image into dozens of forms, and each darted around the creature and bolted it with a rope of yellow energy.

Wong muttered some spell while moving his hands in complex gestures. Spheres that looked like golden bubbles shot from his hands at the center of the creature.

Wanda summoned her power, gathering threads of mind to her fingertips. Had she recovered enough energy? Would she be strong enough?

She shot her energy at the creature, felt its power seeking her back. It was strong. It was old. Did the others understand what one this advanced could do? It was pure energy, but so was gravity, and gravity that was strong enough could crush a person.

She tore into it, trying to make it smaller, hurt it, break it until it was gone.

One tendril snapped into Strange, sending him flying. Vision flew out over the ocean, catching him before he could fall into the water. A dart-like claw jabbed at Wong, who narrowly rolled out of the way and caught the claw with a lasso of magic.

Wanda could feel it squirming into her mind. It bombarded her with images: monsters attacking her from all directions, people she loved being tortured in front of her, Vision being the one she was tearing apart instead of the mind louse. She didn't let them distract her. She had seen what it was, could read what she was fighting. She would not be deceived, would not deviate from her goal, would not let doubts weaken her.

But it reached her, physically grabbed her, pulled her inside it, assaulted her mind and body with every kind of pain. She screamed, but didn't stop.

"No!"

That was not her own anguished scream; it was Vision's.

He plunged into the heart of the monster after her.

_No! It will destroy you!_

The mind louse dropped Wanda. She caught herself just above the water and flew back to the deck.

The thing had Vision. He screamed as it grasped his mind, then fell silent as it tried to tear apart his body. But when it found the synthezoid was much, much stronger than a human, it focused more of its energy on him, trying to drill into him, becoming frustrated by the resistance of his vibranium body, something it had never encountered before.

It was distracted.

It was killing Vision.

Wanda summoned her power again, reaching deeper and further into the mind ether, not caring if she tore herself apart in the process, then focused it into the mind louse.

* * *

Vision suddenly felt the unbearable pain slacken. He began falling, and opened his eyes in time to see the monstrosity he'd been fighting disintegrate into wisps of glowing red smoke that faded to nothing in seconds. Some energy, almost like a magnet, stopped his fall and pulled him to the ship.

Strange flew to him while Wong checked on Wanda, who had fallen in a heap on the deck.

"Vision, can you hear me?" he asked in a clinical tone.

"Yes. Wanda? Is she..."

"She's in better shape than you."

Vision looked down at himself. There was a hole in his chest. Somehow, the creature had been able to break him open. The sight of it focused his mind on his own excruciating pain. It reverberated through all his systems. Parts of himself he could no longer feel, no longer control.

He was mortal.

He was terrified.

"Move. Let me see him," Wanda ordered.

"He's injured," Strange said, sounding somehow both authoritative and flabbergasted. He hadn't known the incorporeal being could physically harm the robot.

"It's not a wound you'd be able to do anything for, Doctor," Wanda replied with an authority and determination that brooked no objections.

She knelt over Vision. Her fingers moved over him. Her scarlet glow entered him, finding the broken connections in his circuits and skin and pulling them back together.

She had just used so much of her power to destroy their adversary that she'd collapsed, Vision recalled.

"Wanda...wait. Are you strong enough..."

"Shut up," she commanded.

He did, not daring to interrupt her again as she focused on healing him.

He felt...odd. A thrum went through his head with each surge of her power. The Mind Stone was responding to her, almost like it recognized her, like it was saying hello to an old friend.

Wanda sat back, panting and shaking.

"You'll be okay, Vision. You'll be okay."

"But will you?" he asked. He tried to move, tried to reach for her. He no longer felt like he was dying, but he was still in pain and weak.

She took his hand, holding it tight in spite of her own trembling. "I'll be fine. As long as we don't have to fight anything else for a while."

"It was you," he said. "This time, when it got into my head, it tried to drive me insane by making me think I'd killed you."

"It's okay."

"But I knew it wasn't true. I knew I could never hurt you."

"Vizh..." The way she was looking at him...

If he'd been strong enough to move, he wouldn't have been able to resist kissing her, robot or not.

He noticed Strange and Wong behind Wanda. They glanced at each other, exchanging a significant look.

"That's what you get for pulling the red thread," Wong muttered so quietly Vision barely heard it even with his enhanced hearing.

Strange rolled his eyes. "We're getting out of here," he announced. "You both need to recuperate before we risk facing anything else."

"What about the boat?" Wanda asked.

"We'll find another way," Strange answered with a confidence that seemed entirely unwarranted.

"Another way to what?" Vision asked. "Didn't we destroy it?"

Strange and Wanda simultaneously replied, "That wasn't the Source."


	28. The Choice

Chapter 28: The Choice

* * *

In the mountains, after seeing you off,  
At sunset I close the brushwood gate.  
The spring grasses will be green again next year,  
Will you, my prince, return or not?

~Wang Wei, "Seeing Off a Friend" From _The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady_, trans. Hans Frankel

* * *

After Wanda used a great deal of her power, she would be drained of energy, physically fatigued with a strange buzzing sensation throughout her body. It would take hours, sometimes days, until she could summon her full power again.

The fact that Wanda had exhausted herself destroying the giant mind louse and mending Vision was all that would spare Doctor Strange's life about an hour later, when he so callously used the word "sacrifices."

It started when they stepped through the portal, after Doctor Strange put the ship in a pocket dimension, and emerged not in the Sanctum as she'd anticipated, but in Shuri's lab in Wakanda.

"What's going on?" she asked Strange.

"I want Shuri to look at Vision's injury. With her expertise in vibranium technology, she should be able to finish healing it."

Vision, in a confused panic, phased into his human mode.

Shuri entered her lab a moment later at a brisk walk, seemingly having been alerted to their arrival.

"You should lie down," she said to Vision. "I need to get a scan of the damage. Please drop the disguise; it might interfere with the scans."

"You know who he is?" Wanda asked.

"A double of Vision from another dimension. Doctor Strange filled me in on everything the last time you were here."

Wanda glanced at Strange, angry not so much that he'd betrayed Vision's secret so easily as that he hadn't told the rest of them.

Vision's human façade sputtered off. Wanda didn't know if he'd deliberately dropped it to comply with Shuri, or if he just didn't have the strength to keep it up.

Shuri stepped closer to him, staring at his face. "You really do look just like him. Sorry, I've just never met someone from another universe before. Not that I know of, anyway." She ushered him to a bed, and when he was situated, she ran some high-tech medical device over his torso. A 3D holographic image of the inside of his chest appeared in front of her.

"Looks like someone patched this up with paperclips and bubblegum."

"That was me," Wanda admitted. "We were...I was just trying to save his life."

"And you did," Shuri assured her quickly. "That wasn't an insult, I'm just saying it's good you brought him to me."

"You think you can fix me?" Vision asked.

"Yes. It will be a simple matter of regrowing the tissue matrix while using pressurized phonon deposition to bond vibranium to it. I have to say, you _look _just like him, but your voice...that's why I didn't recognize you at first. Your voice is nothing like his. Well," she pressed a bead on her bracelet and something that looked like a complex three-armed robotic sewing machine swung down from the ceiling. "Shall we get started?"

The readiness with which Vision said "Yes please" indicated how much pain he was still in.

Wanda drifted closer, watching with fascination, concern, and occasional gut-wrenching sympathy as the machine painstakingly stitched Vision back together.

"This work is much easier without an army of aliens out the window," Shuri said.

Wanda flashed a small, brief smile. "True. Thank you, princess."

"I imagine this all must be very hard for you." She sounded like she was going to add something else, but Wanda cleared her throat, indicating her discomfort with the subject.

She looked at Vision instead, hoping to stave off any more uncomfortable questions from Shuri. "Are you doing okay?"

"It feels weird. But it doesn't hurt. Not more than it did already, anyway."

"Good," Wanda said.

"Welcome back to Wakanda, sorcerers. Though your mode of arrival gives me serious concerns about our security," said T'Challa from the doorway.

Wanda put aside considering the implications of both Shuri and T'Challa knowing about Vision to greet the woman who'd walked in at the king's side. "Okoye!"

"Wanda!" She strode forward to salute her. "My battle-sister! It is good to see you safe. You seemed to just drop off the face of the Earth after Thanos. Were you with the wizards the whole time?"

"Not...the _whole _time," Wanda replied evasively. If Okoye knew just how low Wanda had sunk after running away, she'd be so ashamed.

"We should catch up when you have the leisure. I haven't seen you since Natasha's memorial service."

Technically, they'd seen each other less than two weeks ago, but of course Okoye wouldn't remember that.

"I know. I wanted to thank you for the things you said about Nat at the service. It meant so much to me. You said a lot of the things I wanted to say about her, but I wasn't really...able to talk at the time."

"I understand. You meant so much to her. She couldn't bring herself to talk about you very often during those five years, but when she did I could tell how much respect and affection she had for you."

Wanda tried to swallow down the sudden lump in her throat. She really did want to sit down with Okoye and share memories of Nat over drinks some time. But that would probably have to wait until after the mission.

"Done," Shuri said, retracting the machine from Vision's chest. "Stretch and move around a little bit. Let me know if you feel any pain or tightness in your chest."

Vision sat up, stretched his arms, and swiveled back and forth. "No. It feels completely normal. Thank you."

"My pleasure."

"So I take it you've told T'Challa everything," Strange said to Shuri.

"I couldn't have done the tests to see if the engram transference was possible without him knowing about it. Besides, I don't keep things from my brother."

"And I don't keep things from my general," T'Challa added. "But no one else. Outside this room, no one knows he's here."

"Were the tests successful? Is it possible?" Strange asked.

Shuri nodded.

"What tests? What are you talking about?" Wanda asked.

T'Challa looked startled. "You haven't told them?"

"I didn't see any point in bringing it up until we knew if it could work," Strange replied.

"If what would work?" Vision asked, frowning. Wanda picked up a flicker of fear from his mind.

"An engram transference," Shuri said with an annoyed glance at Strange. "Here. I'll explain." She walked over to a wall, pressed her hand to a bioscanner, and pulled out a slab. There was a body on it.

"When Doctor Strange was here, when we were discussing neurology, he asked me if it would be possible to transfer memories from one brain to another brain if the brains were identical..."

She folded down the cover.

Wanda turned away with a gasp.

As strongly as the image of Vision's lifeless gray body was burned into her memory, it was a different thing to see him in reality, looking the same he had the day he died.

"Why is he here? He's supposed to be..."

Doctor Strange answered. "Vision saw the source of the mind lice in Antarctica without knowing what he saw. He didn't note the coordinates in his report, but he would have it in his memory."

Vision—the living one—stared at the corpse of his counterpart, rising from his bed and taking a slow step closer.

"When Thanos killed Vision to steal the Mind Stone, he destroyed his prefrontal cortex, but the amygdalae and hippocampi are all intact, and his neurons haven't degraded the way a biological organism's would," Shuri explained. "The engrams will still be encoded in his synapses."

"His memories are still there," Strange said. "We just need a way to retrieve them."

"We can't just read a memory from graphing synaptic connections," Shuri added. "Brains are too idiomatic, to start with. But if we can polarize the synapses of one brain to exactly match someone else's brain, we would be essentially mapping the memories of one person into another person's mind. It's not something that I would even try with a human—the process would literally fry their brain—and I can't even begin to describe the computational power it took to record Vision's synaptic connections, but it very well might work."

"You're saying," Vision said slowly, "you could take _his _memories," he glanced back down at the dead Vision on the slab, "and put them in _my _head?"

"Yes," Shuri answered.

Wanda couldn't focus. Everything seemed to be happening too fast. Nothing made sense. Doctor Strange and Shuri thought they could give Red Ultron Vision's memories? How was that possible? Her heart was pounding so loud it filled her head. Could her Vision come back? Her beloved Vision...

But what about the one who was still alive?

"Would it be dangerous?" she asked instead. "Could it...could it hurt him?"

Shuri took much too long to answer. "I don't know. Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and no one else like Vision has ever existed. It's impossible to know for sure what would happen."

"What are the risks?" Wanda asked insistently.

"Like I explained, it's hard to predict. There's a possibility that once Vision's brain patterns are implanted in...I need something else to call you to simplify this..."

"You can call me Red Ultron," he said.

"Red Ultron, it's possible that if we do this transference, Vision's consciousness will be in your head. Vision might be able to communicate with you, see the world through your eyes, basically be a passenger in your brain."

"That would take some getting used to," he said.

"It's also possible the opposite would happen, that his brain patterns would take over, and you would be the passenger, seeing everything that's happening while someone else takes control of your body."

"That sounds like it would be an absolute nightmare," Wanda said.

"My ex-boyfriend actually had that exact nightmare once," Okoye commented.

Shuri continued, subdued, "There's also a risk that rewiring the synapses in the brain regions associated with memory would erase Red Ultron's. He would have Vision's memories, but lose some or all of his own. I designed the ionic probe to exert enough power to create new synaptic connections without destroying existing ones, which I hope will allow new memories to be added without wiping out old ones, but I can't guarantee it will work. It's also possible it won't work at all, that the electrical surge will destroy all existing connections without creating new ones, and he won't remember anything."

"You would kill him," Wanda said, rage beginning to bubble up as she realized the implication of the procedure. "You would wipe out Red Ultron to bring Vision's memories back."

"It's a risk," Shuri said. "I didn't think you would have objections to it. This is a way to bring a part of your Vision back."

"My Vision would never want someone else to die for him to live. He would never agree to this!" She turned on Wong. "Did _you _know about this?"

The look on his face gave the answer even before he said, "This was always the plan. We need to find the Source to destroy it. It's why we recruited Red Ultron in the first place."

"You said I might change my mind," Vision said to him. "You meant that literally."

Wanda looked at Doctor Strange. "You recruited him just so you could destroy him? Just to use him as a vessel for Vision's memories?"

He stepped forward. "You agreed that we needed to do whatever we could to stop the mind lice, to save the world. This falls under that rubric. To save the world, sometimes sacrifices need to be made."

"_Sacrifices?_" She figuratively and literally saw red as her power flared up around her. "You... dare... talk to _me... _about _sacrifices?"_

Her power overflowed, bursting out of her and engulfing Doctor Strange, slamming him against the wall.

From the corners of her eyes, Wanda saw everyone tense or tighten their hands on a weapon as they prepared to choose sides in what would be a terrible fight. But Vision flew forward, putting himself between her and Doctor Strange.

"Wanda, stop, please." He held his hand up to her, his eyes imploring. "I _want _this."

The word _what? _sprang to her mind, but the one that escaped her lips was, "No."

"I want to go through with the engram transference. I want to try it."

"It could erase you."

"It could erase my memories." He actually smiled at the thought. "All the evil I've done, all the horrors I've witnessed...could be gone, and I could give a second chance at life to a better version of myself, a version of myself who was always a hero. This is... This is my chance at redemption. At a real redemption."

It hurt to hear him say that. "You deserve to live, too. You deserve to exist."

"And part of me will exist. If not my memories, it will still be my body, my prefrontal cortex."

She was crying, and didn't know when that started. "But your memories. I know they hurt you, but there must be good ones you don't want to lose."

He paused. "I can write them down before the procedure. But honestly, most of my good memories are favorite musical pieces, favorite books I read, favorite works of art I viewed. And those are things, if I lose my memory, I'll be able to experience for the first time again." He walked toward her, stopping just in front of her. "From my perspective, there isn't a downside to this."

He was determined to undergo the transference no matter what she said, she realized. He knew the risks, but didn't care about them like she did.

Behind him, Wong was helping Doctor Strange to his feet. The Sorcerer Supreme looked stunned but unharmed. T'Challa, Okoye, and Shuri were looking on, waiting to see what Wanda would do.

She felt like she was trapped in a nightmare. If she didn't stop this, she would lose this Vision, just like she'd lost everyone she ever loved, because that's what the world did to her: it made her love people just to rip them away. What did she ever do to deserve this?

"Please don't do this," she begged him.

"I have to. This could be what saves your world."

"You'll die."

"Possibly. But this sounds like it could work, that the real Vision could live again through me."

"The risk is too big."

"It's my risk to take, and my mind's made up. Please don't make this more difficult. And please..." He hesitated. "The only memories I'd truly regret losing are the ones involving you. And I hope that, when I go through with this...I won't lose you."

She swallowed, feeling sick, feeling like she was being asked to sacrifice the person she loved most to save the world for the third time in her life. She could stop it: she could destroy Shuri's lab, make sure they couldn't perform the transference...

And maybe consign the world to doom.

It was Vision's choice. And Vision would choose to save the world every time.

"This is wrong," she said. "It's a crazy, stupid risk to take. But...I won't stop you. And...and I'll be here when it's over. Whatever happens, I'll be here."

Relief flooded over his face. He turned to Shuri. "What do we have to do?"


	29. Dawn

Chapter 29: Dawn

* * *

Tears have obscured the blossoms these many springs,  
And now at length they open full before me.

~Murasaki Shikibu, from _The Tale of Genji,_ trans. Edward G. Seidensticker

* * *

Vision couldn't remember ever feeling so nervous as he did then, lying on the operating table in Shuri's lab as she prepped him. The process, as Shuri explained it to him, would involve immobilizing his body and causing his skin and skull to phase so the thread-thin vibranium microcomputers that would broadcast her specially designed ionic probes to rewire his neural network could enter his brain. He would be vulnerable, comepletely at Shuri's mercy, though Doctor Strange would be observing the entire procedure closely. Vision trusted Shuri, but he also knew no matter how skilled she was, he might die on this operating table. And even if it worked perfectly, what would he be once it was over? How much of what made him _him _would come out the other side? Were these the last thoughts he would ever be conscious of thinking?

Besides Shuri and Strange, the others were there too. Wong, T'Challa, and Okoye stood back to observe, and probably in case something went terribly wrong and Vision became hostile after the transference. Wanda lurked behind them, silently pacing, avoiding eye contact.

He hated doing something she was so opposed to. He wasn't sure she would ever forgive him. But he had to go through with this, regardless. Honestly, he wasn't sure why she objected to this plan so strongly. He would think she would be happy at the prospect of having her world's Vision back, the one she'd known for much longer than she'd known him, the one who hadn't nearly wiped out a planet.

He wished she would understand why he had to go through with this. Or even just _look _at him. If this went wrong, he would choose her face as the last thing he would ever see.

Though he wouldn't admit it to anyone—barely even himself—one of the benefits to undergoing this procedure was that if he could erase his own memories and replace them with those of this world's Vision, then he could stay here, stay in the world where Wanda lived. Whatever was left of him could be near her.

Shuri finished affixing her ionic probe device around his head and positioned her medical life-support suspension device and a vibranium manipulator over him.

"As soon as I begin, you'll be unable to move or speak. Are you ready?"

He took a moment longer to think about his life for possibly the last time. "Almost." He looked at Doctor Strange, standing beside Shuri. "Whatever happens, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to be a hero, for giving me some time in your world." He raised his head slightly and looked past him. "Wong, thank you for treating me with decency and respect. I hope you don't consider it too audacious of me to count you as a friend. I haven't had many. Wanda..." He swallowed. What could he say to her? What could he possibly say to even hint at how much she'd meant to him? He couldn't very well thank her for kissing him, for the nights she allowed him to hold her in her bed, for making him feel human. She would surely not want the other humans to know she had, in a moment of weakness, kissed a robot. He could thank her for showing him such complete trust, for choosing him despite knowing his crimes, for spending her time playing chess with him. "Thank you for everything," he said.

She said nothing, but did look at him. The expression on her face was the one he'd seen when he first saw her, the haggard weariness and resignation of someone who'd been through too much. Only now did he realize how much that look had faded during the weeks he'd known her. He hated that he was the reason for its return.

He lay his head back. "I'm ready," he said to Shuri without letting himself wonder if he really was. He would go through with this. He would not let himself back out.

Shuri pressed a button, and he was suddenly paralyzed, unable to even blink. She examined some readings from the life support machine.

"I'm going to phase the vibranium of your skin and skull now. I don't think it will hurt, but it may feel a little strange."

If it did hurt, he would have no way of signaling his pain, he realized. It didn't hurt, but feeling parts of his body phase without his control was one of the most frightening, helpless feelings he'd ever experienced. He might have asked her to stop if he could.

"The microcomputers are going to enter your brain now. You shouldn't feel anything at this stage."

He saw hundreds of thin, silvery threads slide out of the machine above his head. This, as Shuri had explained to him and Doctor Strange earlier, was an advanced version of the machine she'd used to deprogram Bucky Barnes by erasing the connections between the Winter Soldier's trigger words and his conditioning, and to erase the short-term memories of her brother and the Dora Milaje to undue the insanity caused by the mind lice. This was a much more intensive process, involving more brain regions, more sophisticated manipulation, and literally millions of times more neuronal connections.

The room was silent for several minutes as Shuri manipulated a holographic projection to check each strand of microcomputer penetrating his brain, and everyone else watched tensely.

"I'm going to begin the engram transference now. This may hurt. I don't know if you've ever had a headache before, but this may feel like a sudden, intense headache. Then again, it might not. This is beyond anything anyone has ever been through." She took a deep breath. "May we be walking the path of Bast, and may Bast be walking with us," she prayed, then pressed another button.

He wasn't sure if he could describe the sensation as pain or a blaring light inside his brain. For an instant, it blinded his mind, stopping all thought. Then the light began to differentiate. Facts, images, sounds, sensations...

Memories. A tsunami of memories.

At first, it was too jumbled to make sense of anything. Then individual memories began to emerge in a seemingly random order. _Training at the Avengers' compound, Wanda and Sam trying to get out of a workout session with increasingly absurd excuses that exasperated Captain Rogers and amused the Black Widow. Saving survivors from a collapsed building after an earthquake. Turning a chess piece in his hand over and over. Seeing the lights of New York City from Avengers' Tower, and then his own face reflected in the window. Logging the additional information that Tony Stark was alive and had returned from Afghanistan. Apprehending terrorist-linked bank robbers in London. Wanda wearing an oversized teeshirt, her hair wild, framed in the light of daybreak at a large window, smiling softly at him. Helping Tony design and build Iron Man suits. Practicing to phase his clothes into different outfits from a mens' wear catalogue. Narrowly escaping being murdered by Ultron by uploading his programming to the web. Holding Wanda's hand as they looked out over Paris from the top floor of the Eiffel Tower...  
_

That memory jarred him. He had another memory of the same view of that same city, except rather than being full of lights and motion the city was dead, pocked with bomb craters and buildings destroyed by Ultrons during the war, choked with sooty snow under a cold gray sky, devoid of life.

The memories began to fall into place, organized chronologically and by order of emotional intensity. The capstone of both was the moment he died, when Wanda, her face contorted in anguish, destroyed the Mind Stone. He told her it was alright. He told her he loved her. And then, in an explosion of pain, his existence ended. Then the ending ended. He opened his eyes. Thanos. Wanda crying out _No! _Thanos picking him up, digging his fingers into his head. In the second before the excruciating pain drowned out all thought, he analyzed the situation: Wanda was alive. He was alive. He was about to die. They had failed, somehow.

He felt like he was falling, then the operating table beneath him. He knew this room. This was where Shuri tried to remove the Mind Stone. That time she'd been trying to take something out of his head, this time she'd put something new in it.

Shuri was talking to him. He couldn't comprehend what she was saying. He slowly sat up.

Doctor Strange watched him. He recognized him. Vision had never met Doctor Strange, never even heard of him until Bruce Banner told them about him while explaining Thanos's plans for the Infinity Stones. That felt like only a few hours ago. But he _knew _Doctor Strange. Had known him for weeks.

Wanda...

His eyes found her, still keeping back, but looking at him with apprehension. His beautiful, beloved Wanda. She looked so changed, so worn and sad—because of him, of what he had asked her to do. It simultaneously seemed like mere moments and a lifetime ago. He suddenly understood what he'd just put her through.

It took him several seconds to find his voice. "Wanda."

It was the accent of JARVIS that his vocal aparata produced.

"Vizh?" Her voice was small, shaking.

He pushed off the operating table and flew to her, and wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him as tightly as he dared without hurting her. He wanted to never let her go, never let anything hurt her again.

But that would be impossible. They had a world to save.

Without loosening his arms around her, he looked at the other people in the room. Why had he feared their prejudice if they found out Wanda had feelings for a synthezoid? T'Challa and Shuri had already known, and Wanda wasn't afraid of what anyone thought.

"I have both sets of memories," he said, assuaging their curiosity about the results of the procedure. "I know where to find the Source."


	30. Persistence

Chapter 30: Persistence

* * *

Is that the same moon?  
Is this the same old springtime,  
the same ancient spring?  
And is this not my body,  
the same body you once knew?

~Ariwara no Narihira, Kokinshu 747, from _Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing_, trans. Sam Hamill

* * *

Wanda didn't know what to think. All she'd been able to think for hours was that she didn't know what to think.

After the memory transfer, Shuri and Doctor Strange had examined Vision to see if he'd sustained any brain damage from the procedure, which evidently he hadn't. Then Strange questioned him closely about what he remembered about the mind lice sighting in Antarctica years ago. Then King T'Challa had hosted a banquet.

It had struck her as bizarre, incongruous—surreal—that she, a street urchin from Sokovia, was sitting at a table with a king, a mad-scientist princess, two wizards, and a synthetic man from another dimension who had the memories of her dead boyfriend. The child she had been would never have imagined any of this was possible. And if all that was possible, had happened, was it crazy to accept that her Vision was alive again, inhabiting the mind of his transdimensional doppelgänger?

It seemed crazy. All of this seemed crazy.

Which was why ever since leaving the banquet she'd been sitting on the bed in her guest room lost in a daze. As tired as she was, she hadn't even tried to sleep.

She was waiting for him, she finally realized. But he hadn't come.

With little conscious direction, she rose from her bed and left her room, moving like a sleepwalker through the empty corridor.

She knew Vision's door when she came to it, recognized the glow of his mind behind it. She knocked softly before she could lose her nerve.

"Come in. It's unlocked."

She opened the door.

His eyes widened and he rose quickly from the chair he'd been sitting in. He hadn't expected it to be her.

"Wanda, I thought you would be resting. You have had a very long day."

"I couldn't sleep if I tried," she admitted.

"That's...understandable." His eyes wouldn't meet hers. The expression on his crimson face seemed carefully neutral. It took him a long moment of hesitation before he said, "Honestly, when you left the banquet without a word, I thought you wouldn't want my company."

"Why? Why do you think I wouldn't want to see you?"

"This situation is confusing. I would understand if you need some time to sort out what you want. Or...distance."

"I don't want distance from you," she said.

He glided closer to her. He took her hands. "Wanda, I am so sorry."

"For what?" At the moment, she legitimately couldn't think of anything _he _had to apologize for. Her thoughts were entirely focused on the touch of his hands around hers.

"For Thanos. For what I...what Vision...what I made you do."

"We had no idea Thanos had the Time Stone, or what it was capable of. It was my fault. If I had been more confident in my powers, I could have killed Thanos. I should have killed him before he got anywhere near..." She couldn't decide between saying 'you' or 'Vision', so didn't finish her thought.

"It's not your fault. Thanos defeated Hulk; we knew we couldn't stake the fate of the universe on a direct confrontation."

"Yes, I could have. I _should _have. I should have gone all in that I could destroy him. I could have saved the universe _and..._and you."

"You could have died, and then nothing could have destroyed the Mind Stone before Thanos could get it. I wouldn't have let you."

"You couldn't have stopped me. I screwed up. I screw everything up." She pulled away from him, turning away.

He moved in front of her, desperate to comfort her but with no clue what to say. "Wanda, don't...you can't blame yourself. You..."

"Can you ever forgive me?"

"You had no choice."

"I don't mean for killing you. Can you ever forgive me for trying to stop the memory transfer? I fought Strange to try to stop it. I didn't think it could possibly work..."

"You have lost so many people in your life, you were afraid of losing someone else. I understand." He paused a moment. "I understand _that. _But...why didn't you tell me? Why didn't...why didn't you tell Red Ultron the true nature of your relationship with Vision? You said you were friends, which was technically true, but such an incomplete truth it might as well have been a lie. And yes, I should have figured it out. There were so many indications I should have picked up on—the way you acted around me, the passport, what the Black Panther said about your lover—but I couldn't imagine... You should have just told me."

"I didn't want you to think... I didn't want Red Ultron to think my feelings for him were just because I'd been in love with Vision."

"Were they? Were your feelings for Red Ultron a consequence of your feelings for Vision?"

She took a deep breath that shook when she slowly released it. She felt irrationally as if through not telling Red Ultron the truth and then opposing the memory transference she had somehow betrayed them both. "I don't know. Would it have mattered if they were?"

"I don't know." He watched her for a moment, his hands tensing as if he was fighting the urge to reach for her again. "This is an incredibly complicated situation. A philosophical problem, really. Almost a Ship of Theseus conundrum. Were Vision and Red Ultron the same person? And who am I now? I have the body and brain of Red Ultron, but the memories of both. If the persistence of the self is a function of memories, I am both individuals merged into one. If the self is the physical body, I am merely Red Ultron with memories stolen from Vision. If I am who I choose to be...I am Vision; I would choose as my identity the one who tried to save the world, and not the one who tried to destroy it. All I know is...I have two sets of memories, each equally vivid, each feels like they happened to me. Two sets of lives that I feel I have lived. And in both of them, I fell in love with you."

His words sank into her, shook her as they echoed the last thing Vision ever said to her. It look her a long moment to respond. "You _are _both. I can feel the patterns of both minds, Red Ultron and Vision, integrated seamlessly. And I love you too."

He took her face in his hands and kissed her, slowly and unbelievably gently. When he took his lips from hers he pressed them to her forehead.

"This is complicated," she said.

He drew away and looked at her. "To put it mildly."

"But...it's not like we're strangers to 'complicated'. I mean, the whole time we were dating we were on opposite sides of the law."

He chuckled softly. "True."

She gave him a small, tired smile. She was too drained and too guilt-ridden to muster anything more. "Vizh, when I lost you, I didn't handle it well. I did some things...you'd be so disappointed about."

"Nothing you did could change the way I feel about you," he said. "You don't know how much it means to me just to be with you right now. When I died, I thought I would never see you again. This...is a miracle."

"How do you think _I _feel?"

Even knowing it was a rhetorical question, Vision answered it earnestly. "I don't know. How do you feel, Wanda?"

She considered it. Being near him, which she'd hoped would calm the chaos inside her, was only stirring it more. She loved him, with every fiber of her being, but something held her back. And when she considered his question, it started to coalesce.

"I'm terrified," she said. "Terrified that this isn't real, that I'm going to lose you again, of what it will do to me if I do."

The look he gave her then—full of sympathy, sorrow, love, and absolute devotion—made her wish she hadn't admitted that. Because he would do anything for her. The desperate way he'd held her first thing after the memory transfer showed how much he felt for her, and yet he'd stayed away from her because he thought she wanted time to figure things out. He would leave if he thought that would spare her further pain.

She kissed him, impulsively, desperately. Then she rested her forehead on his.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I love you, and I can't lose you again. You've done your part."

He knew exactly what she was getting at as if he could read her mind. "Don't ask me not to protect you. Don't ask me not to risk my life for you, to die to save you if it comes to that. I couldn't do it. Neither side of me would be capable of it."

"I did it," she reminded him. "I not only let you die, I killed you. And you're telling me you couldn't even stay out of this fight, stay safely in the Sanctum while I face something you have no power against? It's not your choice, Vision. When we go to Antarctica, you don't."

She understood the anguish in his expression, because it was exactly what she'd felt when he told her to destroy the Mind Stone. But this was different. This time, she was right. But it still hurt her heart to be causing him pain.

She put her hands on his cheeks and stared into his eyes. "I'm not asking you to sacrifice me, I'm asking you to trust me. Trust that I'm strong enough to destroy the Source. Trust Strange and Wong to be able to keep me safe when I do. Trust in me this time._"_

He didn't say anything, but his expression shifted to grim acceptance. That was enough for tonight.

Wanda kissed him again. After a moment, he kissed her back, just as hungrily. She could feel the longing coming off his mind, the love for her, and joy at their reunion, but also a sadness and fear at their impending separation.

But that soon faded into the background as other emotions grew stronger.

She paused their kisses to whisper, "I'm cold."

It was an absurd thing to say on such a warm Wakanda night, but he didn't point that out. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed.


	31. Potential

Chapter 31: Potential

* * *

The same to me are somber days and gay.  
Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright,  
Because my dearest love is gone away  
Within my heart is melancholy night.  
My heart beats low in loneliness, despite  
That riotous Summer holds the earth in sway.  
In cerements my spirit is bedight;  
The same to me are somber days and gay.  
Though breezes in the rippling grasses play,  
And waves dash high and far in glorious might,  
I thrill no longer to the sparkling day,  
Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright.  
Ungraceful seems to me the swallow's flight;  
As well might Heaven's blue be sullen gray;  
My soul discerns no beauty in their sight  
Because my dearest love is gone away.  
Let roses fling afar their crimson spray,  
And virgin daisies splash the fields with white,  
Let bloom the poppy hotly as it may,  
Within my heart is melancholy night.  
And this, oh love, my pitiable plight  
Whenever from my circling arms you stray;  
This little world of mine has lost its light...  
I hope to God, my dear, that you can say  
The same to me.

~Dorothy Parker, "Rondeau Redoublé (and Scarcely Worth the Trouble at That)"

* * *

He found himself walking past her door again, and once again his steps slowed. He wasn't tempted to knock, knowing Wanda was still asleep. She needed her sleep. She'd been so exhausted when they got back to the Sanctum a few hours ago (late morning in Wakanda, 3 a.m. in New York) that she'd gone straight to her room. She hadn't invited him to her bed, which he understood. She hadn't gotten much sleep in bed with him last night.

So he slowed as he passed her door, but didn't knock, and he wouldn't enter her room without an invitation. He just wanted to be near her, while he could.

Doctor Strange had insisted they come here to rest and recuperate for a few days before heading to Antarctica to face the Source, to give Wanda time to fully recover her power, and to give the sorcerers time to gather reinforcements. Vision hoped it would give him time to think of some argument to convince Wanda not to leave him behind.

Vision had spent some time in his room, had gone through a rest cycle, then tried to read a book, but had given up when he couldn't concentrate. He'd decided to wander the building, distracting himself with the strange duality he felt in this place where he had been and hadn't been. He supposed this was what humans called déjà-vu.

Unexpectedly, Doctor Strange appeared in front of him. "Vision, just the man I wanted to see. Do you have a few minutes to talk?"

"Of course."

"Great. Come with me. You'll want to put on your human face."

Vision frowned, wondering who he needed to disguise himself for, but took the advice and phased into his inconspicuous human mode. "Where are we going?"

"Kamar-Taj." He opened a portal. "After you."

Through the portal, Vision found himself in some kind of old fortress or temple complex.

They had arrived in a courtyard where 34 people were apparently practicing sorcery, creating ropy, glowing shapes between their hands, under the direction of a bespectacled man with one hand. He and Strange nodded to each other as they passed by.

"This is some sort of school for sorcery?" Vision asked.

"Yes. For most people, it takes years of study to perform even the simplest spells. It took me several months, and I'm a genius with an eidetic memory, and I was desperate to learn when I came here."

"How long ago was that?"

"Depends on if you count by calendar years or years of my life. I was nonexistent for five of those years, but on the other hand I was stuck in a time loop for the equivalent of decades," he said. "There used to be more sorcerers. Shortly before I joined the order, there was a sorcerer named Kaecilius. He read some of the more...esoteric texts, and eventually decided to open the Earth to a demon named Dormammu, which offered immortality by absorbing all life, letting you live forever but without any experience, any passage of time, losing everything that makes life worth living. Kaecilius recruited several followers, basically causing a civil war within the ranks of the sorcerers, leading to the death of the previous Sorcerer Supreme. After that, a disillusioned sorcerer named Mordo traveled the world tracking down other sorcerers and taking away their ability to access mystic energy, until we stopped him. And then there was the battle against Thanos and his forces. We lost some sorcerers there too. It's been a rough decade."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I have to say, I'm still not used to your new accent."

"Is this preferable?" Vision asked in Ultron's voice.

Strange thought it over. "I think I actually prefer the British accent, but being able to switch back and forth is a nice trick. How are you adjusting, psychologically? What is it like having two sets of memories in your head?"

Vision switched back to his preferred voice. "I'm getting used to it. I have always been an amalgam of different sources: I was born with the memories of every previous Ultron, his base consciousness, the memories and protocols of Tony Stark's A.I. JARVIS, and what I believe can best be explained as a subconscious provided by the Mind Stone. Now my mind is a confluence of two different lifetimes. The two lives were different enough that for the most part I can quickly tell if a memory comes from the experience of the Vision of this Earth or from Red Ultron."

"'For the most part'?"

"There are some memories that I'm honestly not sure who they belong to. I remember reading the complete works of Tobias Smollett, for example, but I don't know which lifetime I read them in."

"And I assume that you have an exceptionally good memory to begin with."

He nodded. "I've been told that. Of course, I have no frame of reference to compare it to. I do tend to retain memories in photographic detail."

"Interesting." Strange led them inside, to a dimly lit hall. He sat on the floor behind a low table. "This is where I first met the Ancient One. She gave me some tea, and then she knocked my soul out of my body. At that point, I didn't believe there was such a thing as a soul. I never would have believed magic was real. I was a neurosurgeon, a man of science. And I still am, really. More now than I was then, in a way. Believing you have all the answers is the end of honest inquiry, which is the foundation of science. The Ancient One told me once that not everything makes sense, but I don't fully agree with that. There are things beyond our scientific understanding, but nothing is beyond _science_. I believe that if we could see the whole picture, it would all make sense. But we can't see the whole picture, and we have to accept some things we can't see. At least, if we want to be able to work with them."

Vision sat on the floor across the table from Strange, mirroring his posture. "In my world, the Ultrons encountered one hundred seventy sorcerers. It took an average of fifty-four Ultrons to kill one sorcerer. The Ultrons autopsied some of them trying to figure out where their power came from, but found nothing."

"The power we use doesn't come from within us, it comes _through _us. There's a dimension, a brane if you prefer a more technical term from string theory, that is made of pure mystic energy. Here we learn to open a valve inside ourselves to let that energy flow through." He demonstrated, creating a disk of golden light between his hands. "We learn to channel that energy, to shape it, to alter it. It's kind of analogous to how we use our vocal cords, tongue, and lips to shape air coming out of our lungs into words."

"How does it feel to have that much power flow through you?"

"Your whole body is powered by energy from the Mind Stone. You can use that power to alter the density of your vibranium-infused body. It probably feels about like that." Strange shook his hands, and the glowing shape he'd conjured disappeared. "I mentioned earlier I spent decades in a time loop. I created that time loop to keep Dormammu from invading and absorbing Earth. I did it with an artifact protected by our order called the Eye of Agamotto. Only later did I learn that was an Infinity Stone, the Time Stone. I harnessed the Time Stone to see alternate futures to learn how to defeat Thanos. I saw how Thanos got the Mind Stone. I saw what you and Wanda did to try to stop it. I saw the one, unlikely path that led to Thanos being defeated and the Snap being undone. The Time Stone's power was unfathomable. It took me a while to figure out the Time Stone was not merely an object of power, it was a key, an access point, to an entire layer of the multiverse, the _time _dimension of the spacetime continuum. When Thanos destroyed the Time Stone, he didn't destroy that layer of the universe, just the key to it. I believe that when HYDRA experimented on Wanda with the Mind Stone, it connected her directly to another layer of the multiverse."

Vision's fingers drifted to his forehead. "I feel...an echo in the Mind Stone when she uses her power. That's why. She's connected to me. If...if the Mind Stone that existed in this universe and my Mind Stone are access points to the same layer of the multiverse, as you hypothesize."

"Whatever she's tapping into—we might call it the Mindverse—she seems to have a greater connection to it than you do, even though you're physically bonded to the Mind Stone. It powers you, but it _transformed _her."

Vision wished Wanda could be there for this fascinating discussion. But there were questions he had that he wouldn't necessary ask with her present.

"What would have happened," he inquired hesitantly, "if Wanda had fought Thanos, instead of destroying the Mind Stone? Would she have won?"

"I have no idea," Strange answered. "The only futures I looked at were the ones I could affect, which limited me to my own actions and the actions of the people with me. I saw there was no possible way for me to get to Earth in time, or send a message in time to warn you, so there wasn't a way I could have influenced your decisions. I know Wanda believes she could have destroyed Thanos, and maybe she could have, but it doesn't help anyone for her to beat herself up over that decision now." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "You understand how deeply scarred that event has left her, I'm sure. She said she hadn't expected to live with the consequences. I don't think she would have gone through with it if she knew she would survive."

Vision recalled his own thoughts in the moments leading up to his death: Thanos advancing toward them, time running out. He knew he must die. He hoped Wanda would survive, but between the destruction of the Mind Stone and the threat Thanos posed, he hadn't wanted to consider her chances. "Our survival against Thanos was unlikely," he said neutrally.

"Is that how you were able to go through with the sacrifice? You thought she would die right after you, and wouldn't have to live with what you told her to do?"

He answered thoughtfully. "We did what we believed we had to do to save the universe. The consequences didn't matter."

"Well, she did survive, and the consequences matter now."

It seemed an opportune moment to ask Strange about something that had crossed his mind during his early morning perambulation. "Looking back on your behavior since you brought me onto this mission, and some comments Wong made, I've formed the...suspicion...that you have been trying to nudge me and Wanda together. When you berated her for saving the ship, and then assigned me to care for her...it seems in retrospect like a situation calculated to strengthen our relationship. Did you hope it would make me more amenable to go through with the engram transference if I had feelings for her?"

"Yes," Strange admitted. "But even if the engram transference proved impossible...I could see how much Wanda needed you. When Wong and I found her, she was holed up in an old house in Edinburgh, spending her time looking into other Earths. When I asked her to find a version of Vision who would be willing to risk his life to save an Earth that wasn't her own, she immediately thought of you. Even knowing the things you've done, she was convinced we could trust you. She knew you. She must have been watching you for a while."

Learning the state Wanda had been driven to left Vision stunned. And unexpectedly angry. "You had no right to tell me this. As both a doctor and practically her employer, you should treat her psychological health as confidential information."

"You deserve to know."

"She deserves to decide when to tell me herself, in her own time and her own way."

"You're right. I apologize. The point I was trying to make is that I think she might have seen Red Ultron as a kindred spirit: you were both pushed by circumstances into doing things that haunt you. She's been doing better since joining us, and much better since you joined us, but her recovery is going to take time, and she can't do it on her own. I thought she and Red Ultron could help each other."

It was a strange thought. The person he wanted to be was Vision, the Avenger, the hero, but it might be the other life he'd lived, the villain seeking redemption, who would be better able to help Wanda now.

They could help each other, as Strange said. He thought of how the trust, respect, and camaraderie Wanda had granted him gave him a sense of contentment and a belief in his right to exist that he thought he'd never feel.

"I would do anything for her," he said, a conviction borne by both lifetimes of memories he carried.

Strange nodded. "She told me over breakfast this morning, in Wakanda, that you're not coming with us to Antarctica. She actually threatened not to come if I brought you. I don't know if she'd really put the world at risk to keep you out of harm's way, but after what she's been through I can't say I blame her."

"She does have a point," Vision grudgingly admitted. "My abilities have proven ineffective against these beings. I would be more a liability than benefit in a battle against the Source."

Strange looked at him thoughtfully, steepling his fingers in front of his face in a way that made him look like the stereotype of a psychoanalyst. "How do you feel about that?"

Vision answered honestly, partly because he saw no reason not to, and partly because it was weighing so heavily on his mind he felt compelled to give voice to it. "How would you feel if the person you loved most were to endure something mortally dangerous, and you were not only helpless to assist them, you couldn't even be by their side through it? To stay behind, waiting, and the only way you would know that they're not coming back is that they don't come back, every moment that passes making that fear increase. How will I endure it?"

"Good question," Strange said, perhaps a bit dismissively. "I've never been in that position. But I've kind of been on the other side. You know how I told you I was desperate when I found my way here?"

"Yes."

He pushed back his sleeve, took off a wristwatch, looked at it for a moment, and reverently handed it to Vision. "This was the only worldly possession I had left."

It was clearly a quality watch, though marred with a crack in the glass face. Vision examined it, trying to figure out why Strange hadn't sold it, and why he thought it was pertinent to the conversation. He turned it over and noticed the inscription on the back.

_Time will tell how much I love you._

"Who is Christine?"

"Doctor Christine Palmer," he answered, taking the watch back. "She's a brilliant surgeon. We used to work together. And we used to date, in an on-again off-again way. She loved me. I loved her too, though at the time I was too self-obsessed to appreciate her, which is when the 'off-again' stages came in. Then I crashed my car." He held out his hands.

Vision had noticed the scars on the back of Strange's hands, but hadn't felt their relationship was such that it permitted him to ask about them.

"Severe nerve damage to both hands. I couldn't perform surgery anymore. I felt like I lost everything that made my life worth anything. I could have gone into teaching, or research, or retired comfortably, but if I wasn't the world's best neurosurgeon, who was I? I had seven surgeries trying to restore the use of my hands, sold off my possessions, went deeply in debt. Christine tried to be there for me, but I made it impossible for her. My physical therapist told me about a man who seemingly made a miraculous recovery from a hopeless spinal injury. I tracked him down, and he told me about this place. So I used my last penny to come here. By that point I was bankrupt and homeless. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found Kamar-Taj, or if the Ancient One had refused to take me in. Or maybe I do know what I would have done; I just don't want to accept it." He put the wristwatch back on.

Vision didn't know what to say. He didn't want to criticize Strange—after all, if he hadn't become a sorcerer he would not have been there to save the world from Dormammu, or the universe from Thanos—but in his opinion the right thing to do when faced with Strange's circumstances would have been to accept his altered life, to become an instructor at a medical school to pass his knowledge on to the next generation of neurosurgeons, go into research to develop new life-saving procedures, perhaps marry the woman he seemed to love so much. Instead, he'd torn his life apart trying to get back what he'd lost, and had just happened to find something better.

"You were fortunate," was what he finally decided to say.

Strange snorted a laugh. "Yes, I was. I was one lucky idiot genius." He grew more somber. "Christine and I reconnected, did a long-distance kind of thing that worked for both of us with how busy we were. Then I was blipped. She wasn't. She adopted three kids orphaned by the snap, got married to an architect whose wife was blipped. When the snap was reversed, she and her husband decided to stay together. They share custody of their kids with their biological parents."

"I'm sure Thanos's actions created many such complicated situations."

"Oh yeah. The courts are still working everything out. It's a mess."

"I'm sorry that it didn't work out between you and Doctor Palmer," he said.

"I'm grateful for the time we had together, and I'm happy for her," Strange said. "Want to know what's funny?"

Vision wasn't sure what about this topic could possibly be funny, but he nodded for him to continue.

"When Christine and I would fight, she'd often call me a robot. She meant it as an insult, but having met you, I think it was unfair to robots. She meant to imply I was emotionless, soulless. But you do feel emotions, don't you."

Before gaining Vision's memories, he'd questioned whether the things he felt could truly be called emotions, but he could no longer doubt it. "One of my creators, Doctor Cho, never called me a robot," Vision said. "She refered to me as a synthezoid, a synthetic human. I didn't really appreciate the distinction, until I met Wanda."

"Before it even crossed my mind to find you and attempt the memory transference, seeing how much Wanda loved you made me wonder about how human you had been. And it's obvious how much you feel for her. So if you really want some way to help her against the Source, I have an idea we could try."

He frowned. "What is your idea?"

"Your abilities are ineffective against the mind lice. Only Wanda can destroy them, but the sorcerers can bind them, redirect them. We're organizing a support team. I've decided no more than twenty percent of the sorcerers in our order should join the fight. Some need to stay behind as a second line of defense in case it doesn't work. I estimate it will take about a week and a half to plan our attack. That gives you some time, though not much."

"Some time to _what?_"

Strange opened a small portal and pulled out a stack of old leather-bound books, which he dropped on the table in front of Vision.

"What are these?" he asked, experiencing the rather novel sensation of being completely confused.

"Your homework. You'll need this, too." Strange handed him some kind on antique ring-like object. "It's called a sling ring. It amplifies our connection to the mystic brane, making it easier to access its power."

Vision frowned. He replayed Strange's words in his memory a few times, then their whole conversation. Then it clicked. Strange had been guiding him to this, laying the basis for this proposal.

But it made so little sense Vision couldn't help but feel he was still misunderstanding.

"You want me to...study the mystic arts?"

"If you want to. You would have to learn fast. You'd have to break my record by months in time to help us in Antarctica."

"But...is it even possible? For a...a robot to become a sorcerer?"

"I don't know. But there is literally just one way to find out."

"But...are you sure? If this works, if I have the powers of sorcery as well as the Mind Stone, aren't you afraid I could become unstoppable? You know the things I've done."

Strange shrugged. "Your remorse for the harm you've caused is exactly what makes me think I can trust you with this kind of power. Besides, I'm only going to worry about one potential apocalypse at a time. Are you willing to give it a try?"

"Of course," Vision answered with an eagerness in his voice that surprised himself. If he could learn enough sorcery to fight the mind lice in a week and a half, he could help protect Wanda.

"Great! There are plenty of quiet rooms here for you to study in. When you feel ready, you can join the lessons in the courtyard. Come on; I'll introduce you."

* * *

It was late afternoon in New York when Vision got back, going through a permanent portal Doctor Strange showed him. He'd become so engrossed in his studies that he hadn't considered how long he'd been gone.

He spotted Wanda in the hallway. She looked pale and distraught.

"Wanda..." He glided to her.

"Vizh. Hi." Her voice was tired and quiet.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

He gently placed his hands on her shoulders. "Tell me."

"Nothing's the matter," she said. "It's just...I haven't seen you all day, and I was starting to think maybe...maybe after our argument last night, maybe you decided to leave."

At the fear and insecurity veiled behind that sentiment, his heart broke for her.

"I would never do that to you," he vowed.

"I know." Her voice broke. "I just...I..."

He pulled her to him. She curled against him, pressing her face to his chest.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed.

"Shh. It's alright." He stroked her back.

"I know you're upset by my decision, but I can't risk losing you. I'd rather die than watch you die again."

"Neither of those things is going to happen." He kissed the top of her head.

"I don't mean to be like this."

"It's alright."

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. "Where have you been all day?" she asked in an attempt at changing the subject.

He hesitated a split second. "Studying the sorcerers' books." He wouldn't lie to her, but if she knew what he was attempting she would try to stop him. "I might be able to find some way to help the sorcerers more effectively fight the mind lice." Technically true, convincingly innocuous. "I have to do _something _to try to be useful, Wanda."

"I know." She drew away from him, but stayed close. She was calmer, comforted by his presence. He took her face in his hands, brushing the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.

"Have you eaten?" he asked.

"Not really."

"Perhaps we could order a pizza?"

She laughed. "I love you." That might not have been exactly what she'd meant to say, because before he could respond, she added, "Pizza sounds great."

He kissed her.

He thought back to the things Doctor Strange revealed about Wanda's psychological health. Her panic at his absence wasn't rational, and she knew it, but it was entirely understandable. It would take her time to heal, but she would heal. Vision would help her heal, in any way he could.

But first he had to make sure she survived.


	32. Antarctica

Chapter 32: Antarctica

* * *

'I am just going outside and may be some time.'  
The others nod, pretending not to know.  
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

He leaves them reading and begins to climb,  
Goading his ghost into the howling snow;  
He is just going outside and may be some time.

The tent recedes beneath its crust of rime  
And frostbite is replaced by vertigo:  
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

Need we consider it some sort of crime,  
This numb self-sacrifice of the weakest? No,  
He is just going outside and may be some time—

In fact, for ever. Solitary enzyme,  
Though the night yield no glimmer, there will glow,  
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

He takes leave of the earthly pantomime  
Quietly, knowing it is time to go.  
'I am just going outside and may be some time.'  
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

~"Antarctica", Derek Mahon

* * *

Wind hissed across the ice and rocks. The sun, perched at the horizon, played peek-a-boo from behind feathery clouds. The cold penetrated even through the layers and layers of winter gear, but only when the snow goggles around her eyes or the scarf across her nose and mouth shifted to expose a few millimeters of skin at her forehead or cheeks did Wanda realize how absurdly, devastatingly freezing it truly was.

And this was late spring in Antarctica.

They were on the ridge of an unnamed mountain in the Shackleton Range, heading toward the coordinates Vision had provided. Strange and Wong had recruited a few dozen other sorcerers to join the expedition. They all trudged up the hillside in silece.

Wanda was terrified. She knew what they were about to face more intimately than the sorcerers, having seen a world that had once been overrun by this being. And it was her job to destroy it. She couldn't help but question whether she was up to the task.

They crested the ridge and it came into view before them. She remembered Vision describing this to her. He had no idea what it was, but it hadn't even crossed his mind that it might be alive. It was huge, about the size of the mountain it perched on. It was a tangle of the faintly glowing lines that they were familiar with from fighting mind lice, a slight distortion of the colors and shapes of the landscape and sky behind it. The glow outlined tendrils, dots that might have been thousands of eyes, thousands upon thousands of thin filaments spreading from its body.

And it was surrounded by mind lice.

"Keep them away from Wanda, but otherwise don't worry about the smaller ones," Strange ordered the other sorcerers. "Once we take down the Source, the others will disappear."

He made it sound like such a sure thing.

Wong opened a portal that he and Wanda jumped through. They came out right beneath the Source. Close up, the sheer enormity of it took on new dimensions.

The rest of the sorcerers emerged around them and formed a defensive perimeter around Wanda, keeping the smaller mind lice and the Source's writhing tendrils away from her.

She wished she knew what to do. But she didn't.

All she could do was try.

Summoning her power, she began tearing into the gargantuan entity, attacking it the same way she'd destroyed the mind lice in previous battles.

With each blast, chunks and tendrils disintegrated, but it was no more than a papercut to this thing.

_Make it smaller. Cut it with a thousand little cuts. Keep at it until it's gone, however long that takes._

But the Source was not about to wait passively as she tore it apart by papercuts. A bulge extended from the bulk of its body and burst apart into hundreds of tendrils that shot towards her. Wong opened a portal that swallowed up and cut off about half of them, but the rest engulfed Wanda, lifting her off the ground, away from her defenders.

Chaotic images flooded her mind.

The apartment building that was her childhood home collapsing around her as a bomb detonated.

The HYDRA lab where she and Pietro had lived during the experiments collapsing around her as the Avengers attacked.

The Avengers compound collapsing around her as Thanos attacked.

She fought through it, rejecting the images, pushing through the sense of pain, loss, and fear.

Summoning a fresh wave of energy, she blasted the tendrils surrounding her.

She had to stay sharp and focused; this being wanted to feast on her mind, but it was also entirely capable of destroying her body.

She could see the sorcerers below, fending off the mind lice. Doctor Strange levitated behind her, keeping out of reach of the Source's tendrils while using his powers to keep them away from her as much as he could. But only she could truly destroy this thing, once and for all. She had helped save the world before, from Ultron and from Thanos, but those times she'd been part of a team. This time she would be on her own. The only time she'd ever felt like that was when she destroyed the Mind Stone to try to stop Thanos, and she'd failed. They had eventually stopped Thanos, but that had only been through the deaths of Nat and Tony. And Pietro had died saving the world from Ultron.

Maybe saving the world always demanded a sacrifice. Maybe this time it had to be her.

With that thought, that acceptance, something flowed into her. Not a sense of peace, but a firm resolve that was calming. She didn't have to plan how to destroy this thing and survive. She wouldn't.

"No one follow me!" she shouted at the sorcerers, unsure if any of them could hear her, but pretty sure the warning was unnecessary anyway. She quietly added, "Forgive me, Vizh."

Enveloping herself in as much power as she could summon, she flew straight into the Source.


	33. The Scream

Chapter 33: The Scream

* * *

Is it true my love  
has finally come to see me,  
or am I dreaming?  
Am I sane? Or is she  
An invention of my needing?

~Anonymous, Manyoshu 2917, from _Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love and Longing_, trans. Sam Hamill

* * *

Once inside the Source, Wanda's mind was bombarded with horrifying, bizarre images, things beyond her imagination. She struggled to ignore them, rejecting the reality of them. She rejected everything she saw, trusted entirely to the mind perception she'd gained from her exposure to the power of the Mind Stone. She could sense the attacks coming, could destroy the filaments of the Source before they reached her.

This was going to be a marathon, not a sprint. With a ball of energy around herself she was shielded, and everything she touched of it shriveled away, but it was so unfathomably huge.

She'd been inside it for at least twenty minutes. She had never sustained her full power for this long and could feel herself weakening, flagging.

And suddenly she saw it. She could no longer see the physical world, or even the illusions it threw at her trying to drive her insane, she just saw _it—_the Source in its full, horrifying glory. It looped around itself in ways that didn't seem possible, like an Escher artwork, but once her mind accepted that, she could see it was a fractal pattern, repeating as it spread outward, its symmetries building upon themselves, strands connecting it to every mind louse it had sent out. There had to be millions of them.

She saw something in the nature of this entity that led her to an epiphany about her power. The Infinity Stones, as she'd learned from Thor when he brought Vision to life Dr. Banner when Thanos first attacked, were the Power Stone, the Time Stone, the Space Stone, the Reality Stone, the Soul Stone, and the Mind Stone. They had been formed in the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe. Since her powers had been given to her by the Mind Stone, it made sense that they allowed her to sense people's minds and trigger the cascade of memories and visions that HYDRA had taught her to use as psychological attacks, but she'd often wondered why her powers allowed her to move physical objects that obviously didn't have minds. Now she could see it: _power, time, space, reality, soul, mind—_these were just words, labels someone came up with to try to describe things more ancient than any language, more complex than any words could contain. Just as time, space, and power filled every single point in the universe, so did the others. The Mind Stone didn't affect _minds: _there was something deeper, the material that consciousness was formed from, what minds were made of.

That material was what the Source was made of, and what it ate. It was a matter of entropy: to digest minds, it increased disorder in them to increase order in itself. And she was destroying it because her chaotic power returned its order to disorder. She was essentially disorganizing the _mind _material it was made of.

Now that she could see it clearly, she could discern its structure. With her powers she could see deep inside it, to the heart of it, the source of the Source, the nexus holding it together.

She shot toward that point, slicing her way through its convexities, cutting through it with renewed fury and focus.

And it pushed back against her harder than it ever had before. Physically and mentally.

She felt something around her finger. She glanced down and saw a dark blue string wrapped around her left ring finger.

Now she remembered:

_She'd pulled a loose thread off Vision's passport and wrapped it around her finger, using her power to fuse it into a ring. She looked at it and whispered "I do."_

She opened her eyes. She was still in that old house in Edinburgh.

It had all been a dream, a hallucination. She had finally gone insane and imagined Strange and Wong had come to her. Of course it wasn't real; it was delusional to think she was needed, or even useful, that she and she alone could save the world. She was too damaged, too psychologically ill, to be any use to anyone.

This was where she was, what her life had come to.

Vision—Red Ultron—was hollow. A delusion. A product of her own desperation, her own insanity, creating from nothing a simulacrum of her lost beloved.

But now that she realized it wasn't real, maybe she could wake up from it, regain her sanity, start living her life again, accept that Vision was really gone, forever, and learn to live without him. If it wasn't already too late. If she wasn't already too far gone.

No, wait...she wasn't in Edinburgh. She was still in that cell in the Raft.

Solitary confinement had driven her insane. She'd only hallucinated that Steve came to rescue them. That Vizh had ever felt for her the way she felt for him...

_No! That was true! What they had together, however briefly, was real!_

Refusing to believe reality was another kind of insanity. It had her. The Source had her.

She lashed out. She could see it again, now. It was enveloping her, holding her fast, wrapping her like a bug in a spider's web. She couldn't move.

She screamed.

One of the sorcerer's portals opened a few meter away, deep inside the Source, and a streak of red and gold shot out of it. Shields of mystic energy buttressed her, pushing away the tendrils that had imprisoned her. She began to fall, but felt strong yet gentle arms wrap around her.

She looked into Vision's face, and into his mind. He was real—not the same Vision she had known before, and not exactly Red Ultron, but someone new, a blending of both. He was real, and he loved her, and she loved him.

What the hell was he doing here?

"We need to go," he said.

Before she could argue, or agree that he was right, he was torn away from her. Rather, they were torn apart as the Source attacked them both. Wanda fought back, destroying every tendril that grasped at her. She saw Vision form shields of light between his hands to sever and repulse the tendrils coming at him.

But that made no sense; that was a sorcerer's spell.

She formed a protective ball of energy around herself and moved toward him. Before she could reach him, the attacking tendrils overwhelmed him, wrapping him. She could see them push inside his brain, could feel them invading his mind, doing to him what they'd just done to her.

With Red Ultron's past, the things he'd seen and the things he'd done, what horrors could the Source fashion from his mind to torment him? It would destroy him, tear his beautiful mind to shreds.

It was physically engulfing him, swallowing him deeper into itself.

"No!" she screamed. If this apocalypse required a sacrifice to avert, it would be _her. _Not him. Not this time.

Drawing on a well of power beyond her, she channeled it outward, shooting it through her.

The Source was taking Vision from her, torturing him, trying to destroy him.

How _dare _it!

She shot to the heart of it, the place she'd glimpsed before, its nexus point, the keystone of its structure.

She ripped it apart.

She incinerated it.

The Source began to untangle, unravel. Her senses were blasted with a mental scream of distress, desperation. Dying.

Where was Vision? Where was he? She couldn't see him. She couldn't sense him.

She couldn't sense anything over the scream.

She passed out.


	34. Afterlife

Author's note: Final chapter. Thanks for reading!

* * *

Chapter 34: Afterlife

* * *

'Tell me, where do ghosts in love

Find their bridal veils?'  
'If you and I were ghosts in love  
We'd climb the cliffs of Mystery,  
Above the Sea that Wails,  
I'd trim your gray and streaming hair  
With veils of Fantasy  
From the tree of Memory,  
'Tis there the ghosts that fall in love  
Find their bridal veils.'

~Vachel Lindsay, "Ghosts in Love," from _Poems Bewitched and Haunted_, ed. John Hollander

* * *

She couldn't find Vision. She searched for him, but couldn't find him. Where had she searched? She didn't know. She couldn't see. She couldn't feel. Couldn't touch, or hear. All she knew was she didn't know where Vision was.

The Source had begun to unravel. Had she destroyed it? Or did it destroy her? Was she dead? Was Vision? Did he escape when the giant Mind entity collapsed?

She'd seen him use sorcery—or had she imagined it? Was he able to use a sorcerer's portal to escape?

The architecture of the Source filled her mind. It wasn't that she could see it, but it was burned into her memory, making it hard to think of anything else.

She smelled something. Something fresh, sweet, floral.

Her eyes opened.

The room was unfamiliar, though after a few moments she recognized the furnishings as Wakandan. A window opened to a bright green garden. There was a vase next to her bed holding plumeria flowers. That's what she'd been smelling.

Was this real? It seemed real. The bed beneath her seemed solid. The breeze drifting in from the garden felt real. She touched one of the soft, delicate flowers. It seemed real.

The bone-deep ache and buzzing sensation throughout her body were definitely real.

This room seemed safe and comforting, but Vision wasn't there.

There was a sound, a soft knock. Wanda saw Princess Shuri tapping at an open door.

"I was hoping I could get here before you woke up," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"What happened?"

"You won," Shuri replied. "You saved the world."

"What happened to Vision? Did he..." She couldn't finish the question, couldn't even formulate it.

"Vision's fine. From what I heard, he found you after the Source disintegrated. You were pretty banged up and unconscious, so they brought you here. At first I thought you had a concussion, but—"

"Where is he now?"

"In the next room. He's been worried about you, but he wasn't sure you would want him here when you woke up. He said you might be angry with him."

"I want to see him. I need to see him."

He phased through the wall (he'd obviously been eavesdropping) and flew to her side. "Wanda," he breathed. His hands clenched, resisting the impulse to reach for her.

He didn't appear to be physically hurt, Wanda noted with intense relief.

"Vizh, how are you? Are you okay?"

That elicited a look of incredulity. He couldn't believe after what she'd been through she could be worried about him. "I'm unharmed," he said. "The Source incapacitated me, but it was destroyed before it could do serious damage."

"What were you doing there? You promised me you would stay away, stay safe."

"I'm going to just go," Shuri said, slipping out of the room.

Vision kept his eyes on Wanda's face, in that familiar intense stare that always melted her. "I couldn't. If it is ever within my power to protect you, I will. I can't do otherwise," he said. A long, tense moment passed in silence. "Wanda, can you ever forgive me?"

She found she was too tired and relieved to be angry.

But it shouldn't have _been _within his power.

"How did you get there?" she asked. The explanation came to her even as she spoke. "Strange has been teaching you, hasn't he?"

"Yes," he confirmed. "I was desperate to find a way to help, and he was curious as to whether I would be capable of sorcery."

Wanda discovered she wasn't too tired and relieved to be angry after all; she just couldn't be angry at Vision.

"I do forgive you."

Though she felt relief from his mind at those words, it was quickly surpassed by a wave of fear. "Do you still... Are we still..." He took a deep breath. "Do you still wish to be with me?"

That insecurity was coming from Red Ultron; with the crimes of his past, he still didn't believe he deserved her, and would readily believe he had lost her. He didn't need to worry. She understood, because she would have made the same choice. She would do anything to protect Vision, even if it meant she would never see him again. Because she loved him.

She realized she'd been silent for several seconds—seconds which had been agony to him as he awaited her verdict.

"Of course I do, Vizh," she said. "I watched you die, twice. Then I had to survive without you in my life. I was yours, and then you were gone, and I was no one's. I never want to be that again."

He finally took her hand. "Wanda, I am the one who is yours."

She smiled tiredly. "Then we're each other's, I guess."

He chuckled. "You should rest."

"Stay with me, Vision?"

"I will."

* * *

Wanda sat on the broad windowsill, looking out into the garden, deep in thought.

Vision returned, handing her the cup of tea she'd requested. "Are you sure you should be out of bed?"

"I'm feeling much stronger," she said. "Not back to a hundred percent yet, but that might be for the best."

"Why might that be for the best?"

She didn't answer directly. "Do you know where Doctor Strange is?"

"I haven't seen him since we brought you here, but I expect he is either at the Sanctum in New York or at Kamar-Taj, the sorcerers' training compound. Why?"

"Can you take me to him? Can you open one of those magic portals?"

"Yes. The key to opening a portal is picturing where you want to go as vividly as you can, and with my photographic memory, that was the first spell Doctor Strange taught me."

"Okay." She stood up. "Let's go."

"You wish to go now?"

"I need to talk to him. And I'll need you with me when I do."

"Why?"

"Because I might need you to stop me from trying to kill him."

* * *

They found Doctor Strange sitting at a table in the library in the New York Sanctum. He looked up at them evenly. "I wasn't expecting you quite so soon."

Wanda took a deep breath. "You lied to me." She took a small, involuntary step towards him. "You betrayed me. You used Vision."

Vision glanced at her, frowning, then at Strange, whose impassive face showed not even a hint of disputing her accusations.

She continued in a quiet voice creaking with restrained rage. "You led me to believe you wanted to recruit Vision because you thought his powers might be useful, then that you just wanted him to implant the memories that would let us find the Source. But that wasn't the whole reason either, was it?" She took another step closer, threads of red orbiting around her twitching fingers. "When I told you I wouldn't let Vision come with us, you taught him sorcery in secret, because your real plan needed him to be there." She paused to take another deep breath.

Strange sat impassively, hands flat on the table, making no visible preparations to defend himself.

"You decided to recruit Vision right after I told you how my powers work, that their strength depends on my emotional state. Your plan the whole time was to put Vision right in the path of danger, that you would risk his life to make me..."

"To make you strong enough to destroy the Source," Strange stated. "Your strongest emotions center around him." He nodded at Vision. "So, yes. I knew your best chance of destroying the Source was if you did it to save not the world, not your own life, but the person you love most. And I knew that you would never go along with it knowingly."

"You bastard," she whispered.

"I did it to save the world, and it worked. If you kill me for it, it was still worth it. Are you going to kill me?"

"I don't know," she said, trembling. "I want to."

"We all want to do things we decide not to do." He looked from her to Vision. "You look like this is news to you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you the whole plan from the beginning. I knew you wouldn't feel right about putting yourself in deliberate danger to manipulate her."

"You're right about that," Vision confirmed. "There must have been a better way."

"Maybe. Maybe Wanda could have destroyed the Source without you there. But with the world at stake, I wanted the best chance we could get. Was I wrong?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "I think..."

When he trailed off, Wanda asked, "What do you think, Vision?"

"I'm upset that you were so cruelly manipulated, but this plot Doctor Strange devised is what brought me from a solitary life in my world to this world, the reason my memories were resurrected, the reason I am no longer alone. It gave me friendship, redemption, and...a second chance at a life with the woman I love. Subjectively, it feels as if it were worth the subterfuge."

"You're saying the ends justify the means?" She still wasn't sure if she would give in to the urge to kill Strange. She already would have if she didn't fear Vision's reaction.

"In this case, perhaps. At any rate, it can't be undone, and further violence will not heal anything."

Wanda hated how well Vision understood her sometimes. She let the red glow around her hands fade out.

"Well, if you're not going to kill me, I have an offer for you," Strange said.

"I am not interested."

"Vision might be."

Wanda blinked, suddenly curious.

"Train at Kamar-Taj. Both of you," he said. "Study the mystic arts. Study your powers. Free room and board and a generous stipend for as long as you want to stay."

"We'd be free to leave?" Wanda asked.

Strange tilted his head, looking at her like he was assessing a patient, or a job applicant. "Miss Maximoff, I think it might not have sunk in yet, what you just did. You saved the world. You. Saved. The world. Anything you want that's within my considerable power to grant in repayment is yours for the asking. But what I want for you, and what I believe you may want for yourself, is a few years in a quiet Himalayan retreat to study and relax. Meditate, explore, maybe even take some online courses and get a college education. Kamar-Taj has excellent wi-fi."

She was stunned by the offer. It seemed too good to be true. But she didn't read any hint of deviousness in Strange's mind—in fact, despite his apparent lack of remorse for his deception, she detected regret. He still believed he'd done what was necessary, but he was sorry for it, and sincerely wanted to make it up to her.

She glanced at Vision. He was keeping his expression carefully neutral. He didn't want to influence her decision, but she could feel how much he wanted this.

"You've been to Kamar-Taj?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"Is it nice?"

"It's beautiful," he replied.

Where else could they go? The Avengers had disbanded. The compound—the only home Vision had ever known in this world—was in ruins. They could ask for sanctuary in Wakanda, but she didn't like the idea of trying to build a life so close to the battlefield where she'd killed Vision. That moment haunted her enough without the daily physical reminder. She also didn't want to ask Clint to take them in, or crash on Sam's couch in New York. But those were all possibilities.

"What do you want to do?" she asked.

He answered slowly and thoughtfully. "I would like to return to my world, continue my work there. But I do not want to stay there permanently. I feel I belong in this world now, but I still feel a responsibility to do something to improve the other. If I could study with the sorcerers and improve my skills with portals, I would not have to choose."

She could go with him to the world devastated by Ultron and help him in his work. She wondered if with her powers she could clear the dust and ash from the sky and get the sun to shine again. She could help save another world. She liked that thought.

She looked at him a moment longer, then back at Doctor Strange. "You know I'll never trust you again, right?"

"I don't see why you would have to," Strange replied.

Though she'd never forgive him for putting Vision in danger, she found she didn't hate Doctor Strange. His offer was tempting. It was, in fact, exactly what she wanted. And she and Vision would be together. "In that case, I think I'll give Kamar-Taj a try, see if it works out."

* * *

Chill air wafted in from the open window, but Wanda didn't mind. The window gave a fantastic view of rugged, snowy mountains, currently glowing orange in the light of sunset. And she was comfortable, wrapped in a heavy quilt, her head and hand resting on Vision's chest.

"You're right; this place is beautiful."

"Yes," he agreed.

"I think I'll like it here. But sometime soon I want to visit Clint and Sam and Steve."

"I would like to see them too, as well as Ms. Potts and Doctor Banner," Vision said. "Though perhaps you should explain who I am before we spring my existence on them. It may come as somewhat of a shock."

"I think they'll take it fine," she said. "After everything that's happened, I think they'll just be happy to have you back."

"I hope so. Other than our close friends, I would prefer if the world continues to believe I am dead, for the time being. I am not ready to explain my identity to the public, or to answer questions about my past as Red Ultron, or to relive the details of my death."

"I understand. The Sokovia Accords are still technically in effect, even though after Thanos nobody's wanted to worry about them, so my legal status is still iffy. I'm grateful for the chance to lay low for a few years." She smiled as a thought occurred to her. "I guess we're just a couple of ghosts."

"This is a better afterlife than I had hoped for." He held her close, stroking her hair. "Shall I close the window?"

The temperature was dropping. The evening light had left the mountains, though the high cirrus clouds still glowed bronze.

"Leave it open a little longer," she said. "I'm not cold."


End file.
